Jigger of Djinn
by r2metoo
Summary: The Djinn don't like being messed with, and they really don't like uppity hunters killing their members. One such hunter bit off more than he can chew, and now Sam, Dean, Bobby, Cas, Gabriel and Garth are going to do what they can to get rid of the Djinn before the Djinn get rid of all of them.
1. In which we meet our intrepid heroes

**Hey there, SPN fans. I bring before you my first SPN fanfiction, which indeed features not just one but three original characters. I promise you, I am doing my best to keep them from Mary Sue/Marty Stu territory, and that none of them will be paired up with the canon characters. The only pairing really in this fic is Destiel, and it will be in here by gum. I even have two deleted scenes that will be a bit too steamy for this fluffy little fic. **

**I have finished the story, but I'm not sure how many chapters I'm going to divide it into yet. I will be updating regularly, at least once a week. **

**The timeline for this fic is an AU where the people we love still live, but there are mentions of up to S8 within the text. **

**I hope you enjoy! **

Cora Bartholomew packed up her oboe and slid her backpack onto her shoulders, calling goodbye to some people and hugging others before making her way out of the school with her best friend, Monica Reyes. Once they crossed the parking lot, they split up and went in separate directions; Monica to the right, Cora to the left.

During the fall, when the high school band played for the football games and competed in marching competitions, Cora's little brother Ben would go home with his friend Jimmy and wait for Cora to pick him up. Together, they would go walk the block it took them to get home and start dinner before their parents got home.

Ben and Jimmy were playing in Jimmy's front yard when Cora walked up the tree-lined street in the falling twilight. The sky was cloudy, making it darker than it usually would have been even though it was currently fall and the nights were coming earlier and earlier.

"Ready?" she called, switching her oboe case to the other hand.

"Coming!" Ben promised, heading inside for only a second to retrieve his bookbag and skateboard. On the way home, he skated on ahead of her, doing tricks against the curbs and driveways whenever she needed to catch up to him.

One part of the sidewalk was broken, the pavement jutting up sharply due to a tree root that the city had yet to do anything about, and Ben took the opportunity to sail over the makeshift ramp as he had been doing for the past several weeks, gaining height and confidence each time he did it.

Except for that one blemish, the street was nearly perfect. It was one of those suburbs that they recreate in movies all the time whenever a sleepy, idyllic neighborhood is required. Most of the houses were colonial in style with pillared porches, long manicured front yards that usually sported a tree of some sort in the very middle, all restrained by a low fence of some sort. A few of the neighbors even had wishing wells.

The Bartholomew house was no exception. The little gate that the children opened to admit themselves onto the brick walkway that split their yard in half was white with black wrought iron, and the tree in the front yard was a Japanese maple, its red leaves still clinging to the branches no matter how hard the wind was trying to loose their hold. They climbed the three shallow steps onto their white and shale porch with its pretty swing, now banging annoyingly against the enclosure thanks to the wind, and Cora fit her key into the lock on their pretty dark red door.

The door was her favorite part of the house. It was an unremarkable house otherwise, but the door, curved at the top with a four-sectioned glass porthole on the front made the split-level gabled cottage something unique in a neighborhood full of gingerbread houses.

Cora had been outside since school had let out at 3:30, so her first step inside was almost stifling. She dropped her oboe case and her backpack, shucking her jacket and sweater and kicking off her boots. Ben was already dressed in shorts, as he always was until the first snow of the year when their mother would force him into a pair of jeans, but even he found the indoors a little too stuffy after an afternoon outside.

They both dragged their backpacks into the kitchen and Ben settled down to do his homework while Cora turned on the oven to preheat while she dressed a thawed chicken and wrapped some sweet potatoes in foil and put it all into the oven to roast.

By the time their father walked in the door, the kids' stomachs were growling at the heady smell of baking chicken and Owen Bartholomew only added to their gastrointestinal distress by adding the smell of pan fried Brussels sprouts to the mix. He wouldn't tell their mother how he cooked them so she wouldn't know how much butter he melted in the pan before he put the little green half-domes face down to brown and caramelize the way the family (well, except for Ben) liked them to be.

As Cora sat huddled under a blanket, unsure as to whether or not her family lived or died, having just been ripped from them by some strange creature, it was funny to her how every detail of the evening played out in her mind, reminding her of what she was going to lose when the sicko who was currently sizing her up finally had his way with her and ended her life.

The ironic part was that she didn't really have a good grasp on how she had gotten into this current predicament. It was as though her brain were trying to replay only the happy parts of the evening. The broken window, the sound of inhuman snarling, the scream of her mother as she was cut across the chest, the snap of her brother's leg as the creature stepped on it mercilessly, the shout of her father as he collapsed from the heavy blow of a fist, all of that was a blur.

She couldn't just blank out the dank cellar she was currently incarcerated in, however. And she couldn't unsee the face—the thing—in front of her, no matter how hard she tried.

It was something out of a nightmare, this creature. It had the nerve to look practically human, save for the fangs and the claws and the odd markings on its body.

"Pretty girl," it rasped, lifting its hand to her face, brushing her dark curls back. "Pretty, pretty girl."

Cora just stared at it, feeling faint.

"Edgar Rothschild, you are a very pretty girl."

"My name isn't Edgar Rothschild," she said, grasping at that. "Please, I'm not who you think I am."

"You are Edgar Rothschild," it repeated. "Yes, you are his."

Cora realized what he was saying and shook her head again. "No, my father's name is not Edgar Roth, it's Owen Bartholomew…Please!"

Unable to do anything else, she closed her eyes against his horrifying face and started to sob.

"Please!" she repeated again.

"She is," it said, hopefully to itself because if there was another one of them hanging around, Cora wasn't sure she could handle it. "She is the child of Edgar Roth. He has transgressed against us, and he shall pay in the blood spilled from his children."

Cora let out a whimper and buried her head in her hands. Well, if he was going to kill her, could he just get it on with already? The sound of a crash in the silence made her jump and whimper some more. What was it doing? Smashing furniture? Another crash, and then someone shouted, "Dean, behind you!" followed by another crash, the sound of the creature groaning, a second voice saying, "I got it, Sammy!" and then an unearthly wail followed by a slight tremor.

Cora suddenly knew what the term "out of the frying pan and into the fire" meant.

"Where's the girl?" the second voice, the one presumably belonging to Dean asked.

"Check the blankets," Sammy suggested. "Cora? You here?"

They knew her name! Oh no, had they tortured her parents? Poor little Ben?

The blanket was thrown off of her and Cora found to her great relief that a very human face was smiling down at her. "You Cora?" he asked.

Cora nodded.

"I'm Dean, this is my brother Sam. We're gonna get you outta here, kay?"

"M-my family?" Cora shuddered, suddenly cold. Sammy, the one with the sandy brown hair and kind dark eyes shucked off his jacket and wrapped it around her before lifting her against his chest.

"Your family's fine," he promised her. "We'll take you to them."

Cora turned and looked at Sammy's face. "Who are you? Really?" Her voice sounded unnaturally high, but she assumed she could be forgiven for that under the circumstances.

"Just call us good Samaritans," Sammy said, pulling her closer.

Cora looked over his shoulder at Dean, who was coating the body of the creature with something. He threw a match down on it as he turned to follow them.

"It's okay; we're professionals," Dean promised with a wink.

Cora couldn't help herself. She sank into oblivion.

She awoke with a start, panic rising for a moment until she heard Sam say, "I just don't think Metallica's "Enter Sandman" is really going to help her get rid of the nightmares."

The music that had been playing abruptly stopped.

"I ain't puttin' in any Wham!," Dean groused.

"There has to be something between metal and pop," Sam reasoned. "Just like there has to be something between 1975 and 2012."

Cora sat up. "I've got The Clash, but that's as far as I'll go," Dean said, looking back at Cora in the rearview. "Hey, you back with us, kiddo?"

Cora looked out the window and felt that sinking feeling of dread again. "We're nowhere near my house," she squeaked.

"We're taking you to the hospital," Sammy supplied.

"No, I'm fine, just…take me home? Please?"

Dean looked at her in the rearview once more. "Well, your parents and brother at the hospital, so we thought we'd take you there. Is that okay?"

Cora breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, that's good."

"You warm enough?" Sam asked, turning to face her. Cora supposed it was her hormone addled teenaged mind that decided to notice that these two brothers had basically won the genetic lottery. They were so handsome and tall, and Monica was going to be really, really jealous when she heard the story. If she believed it, that was. "We can turn the heat up."

"I'm good," she promised, slipping her arms into his jacket. She didn't suppose they had any spare shoes in her size hanging around, so she didn't mention her stocking feet. "Um…that thing? What was it?"

The brothers glanced at each other. "It was a Djinni," Dean said.

"Like from the Arabian Nights?"

"Yeah exactly like that," Sam said with a smile. Cora's brain stopped working for a second. Wow. "Except they're literally bloodthirsty and they don't grant any wishes."

"What did it want with me?"

Sam and Dean exchanged a look again. "We don't know," Sam said, obviously lying. He just didn't have the face to pull that sort of lie off. Cora frowned at him. "Look, we need to talk to your mom," Sam said quickly, obviously on damage control.

The hospital was far too bright and quiet, the waiting room filled with a ragtag group of people in varying stages of health, age, weight, size, and criminal background. One particularly creepy looking man was staring at Cora's feet while he licked his lips. Sam shot him a withering look.

"Owen, Moira and Benjamin Bartholomew?" Dean asked the receptionist with a wink and a winning smile. "We have their daughter."

The receptionist looked impressed. "You found the kidnapped girl?"

"Well, not by myself," Dean said, turning the charm on a little thicker. "My brother helped a bit."

Sam, who had insisted on carrying Cora when he realized she was barefoot sighed and sort of held her out for a second. "Can you please tell us where the Bartholomews are?"

"Sure thing!" the woman said. "I'll take you back myself."

Owen was standing outside of a room, talking with a doctor.

"Daddy!" Cora screeched, causing her father to abruptly end his conversation and run to her, taking her from Sam's arms as she wriggled from his grasp.

"Cora!" he shouted hoarsely. "Oh, thank God! Thank God!"

"Not God," Dean said with a smirk. "Just us."

Owen looked up from where he had buried his head against Cora's hair and smiled at the brothers.

"You found her!" he said happily. "Thank you so much!" he let go of Cora enough to start pumping their hands with a huge smile on his face.

Oddly, both Sam and Dean looked pained at this. "Um…is Moira awake yet?" Sam asked.

"Oh, yes, she is," Owen said. "I'm sure she'll want to see you."

He turned to usher the brothers into the room, and Cora heard Dean say, "I doubt she wants to see us," under his breath.

Moira, it turned out, was happy to see the brothers, but her face turned troubled as well. Cora ran to her mother and threw herself at her, but then backed off at her mother's grunt of pain, remembering that the Djinni had slashed her across the chest.

"Did it hurt you badly?" Cora asked.

"I'm fine, honey. I'm fine." Moira sized up Sam and Dean. "So…you're the Winchester boys."

"Yes, Ma'am," they said in unison.

"I haven't seen either of you in years."

Cora turned to her mother sharply. "You know them?"

"Their father was friends with your father," Moira said.

Cora frowned at her dad, but he shook his head, a sad expression on his face.

"Oh," Cora said. "You mean my real father."

Sam and Dean exchanged another glance. "We'll just, uh…" Dean said at the same time Sam said, "I think we can find something…"

"No, you need to stay here," Moira said. "We don't have much time."

That sinking feeling came back. Cora turned to her mother with a frown. "Mom?"

Moira sank back against the pillows.

"She's not well," Owen pointed out.

"I'll be quick," Moira said. "Cora, Sam and Dean are going to take you someplace safe. They'll explain why. I need you to go with them and do whatever they tell you to, okay? I trust them."

Cora stared at her mother, unsure what was happening. "Wait, what? Mom, no…why?"

"Because, you're in danger right now. They're going to protect you, but you'll be okay."

Both Sam and Dean nodded and tried to give her a reassuring smile.

"Dad, you can't be serious…"

Owen wrapped his arms around her again. "We're serious, sweetie. I'm really sorry, but your mother is right. And it's not going to be forever, but for a little while, you need to go to a safe house."

"There are more Djinn out there," Dean said. "And they're going to keep coming after you right now."

Cora swallowed hard and thought about her family. If those things were going to keep coming, her family would just keep getting in the crossfire, and that wasn't fair.

"But what do they want with me?" she asked out loud.

Sam gave her a sympathetic look. "Your father is like me and Dean. He's a Hunter, and he was hunting a Djinni. It turns out that they have some sort of hierarchy, and the one your father ganked was sort of a prince or something in their culture. They're taking it as a personal affront, and they won't stop until they take your father's family from him."

"Edgar Roth," Cora whispered.

"Yes, that's his name," Moira said. "How did you know?"

"The Djinni. It called me 'Edgar Roth's Child.'"

"Ed's working with some other Hunters, trying to find out how to banish all the Djinn back to their dimension," Sam said. "He's really good with that sort of thing. There's another Hunter named Bobby who has a house that's safer than anywhere else in the world. Nothing will be able to touch you there."

"Are there more kids?" Cora asked. "The Djinni said that the blood of his children, plural, would be spilled."

"There's one more," Dean confirmed. "Another friend is going after him right now. You'll both be kept safe."

He. She had another brother. Out there, somewhere, was another brother.

Cora fainted again.

***Smirk* Monica Reyes. Sorry, couldn't help myself...**


	2. Where Cas and Gabe make an entrance

**Angels be present in this chapter. Also, I want to thank L. Greene for the term "Sinchesters," which I have shamelessly stolen from her. **

Cora awoke back in the backseat of the Impala, a blanket now securely tucked all around her. This time, she didn't sit up. It was nearing dawn and she was exhausted and so much had happened to her already. She felt tears accumulate behind her eyes, and not even trying to fight them, she just let loose and started crying quietly. Something was trying to kill her because of a man she had never met, who had never contacted her and who had never tried to be a father to her.

The first rays of dawn started shining through the blanket, hurting her head as she continued to cry, not caring if the brothers heard her.

And then abruptly, there was another body in the car, sitting on her legs.

"Dean," it said, but it didn't say anything else because Cora sat up and started screaming like her life depended on it.

Dean nearly crashed the car, and he had the stone cold reflexes of a man who had witnessed just about every blood-curdling scenario you could imagine for the past thirty years.

"Jesus Christ!" he shouted, using all of his strength to keep the Impala moving forward and not swerving off to the right or left.

"Cora, it's okay," Sam soothed, turning in his seat and patting her arm.

Cora just continued to stare at the new man, screaming bloody murder.

Dean pulled off to the side of the road and Sam jumped out, opening the back door and pulling Cora out. He gave her cheek a slight slap, nothing to hurt, just enough to break her out of her hysterics. Cora caught her breath and began to sob again, sinking against Sam's chest as she listened to Dean berate the other…thing.

"Dammit, Cas, how many times do I have to tell you to quit mojoing yourself down on top of us? You scared the poor kid to death!"

"I apologize, Dean, but I did come to help."

Sam tightened his hold and said, "Hey, it's okay. Cas is a friend of ours."

"How…how did he do that?" Cora asked.

"He's sort of an angel," Dean said.

Cora swallowed down her fear. An angel?

"An Angel of the Lord, to be precise," the one called Cas said. "And my full name is Castiel."

Cora turned to face him, surprised at how…small…he seemed. Not that he was precisely short. He just wasn't taller and bigger than Sam, which she had expected from an Angel of the Lord. The only thing really remarkable about him were his eyes, which seemed to be a cobalt blue. She had never seen a blue so deep and clear.

"Y'okay, Cora?" Dean asked.

Cora nodded, still clinging to poor Sam, who just let her nestle against him. She knew she should step away from him, but things were starting to come at her too fast, and she just didn't have the strength to stand on her own.

"He won't hurt you," Sam promised. "He's a good guy. And if he says he's here to help, then he'll help keep you safe."

"Okay," Cora said, still sniffling.

"Are we ready to get moving again?" Dean asked. "'Cause we're sort of sitting ducks out here right now."

They got back in the car, only this time Sam managed to fold himself into the backseat since he thought Cora would feel more comfortable sitting next to him than Castiel, and they headed to a motel outside of Baltimore. The brothers ushered Cora inside and showed her how to pour salt around the doors and windows. Dean and Castiel discussed the Djinn—the Ifrits—while they worked.

And then someone else snapped themselves into the room and Cora gave another little scream, staring at the new visitor.

"Baby brother!"

Castiel looked up from the book Dean had handed him. "Hello, Gabriel."

Cora's eyes widened. "Wait…this is…"

"Gabriel," the angel said with a smirk. "Or you can call me Loki, if you prefer."

"Loki?" Cora murmured. "But that's Teutonic myth, not Christian."

"What can I say, I dabble," Gabriel offered by way of explanation. It did little to alleviate Cora's confusion. Also, Gabriel was a very small man, particularly in comparison to Castiel, Dean and Sam. It was almost like angels were inversely proportioned according to the amount of power they had. She wondered briefly if God was three feet tall.

"But if you're Gabriel, doesn't that mean you're from the Bible?"

Gabriel had a look on his face that Cora took to mean he didn't want to talk about it, so she started to try and change the subject, but all at once, the archangel smirked again. "The very one. "His name shall be called wonderful, counselor, everlasting blah blah…dear Dad, but that Mary was uptight. So worried I was there to take her virginity. As if!" His tone got conspiratorial. "I like a woman with a little experience, if ya know what I mean." His eyes raked over her body. "Then again, I'm willing to make exceptions now and then…"

"Okay, enough!" Dean shouted, pulling Gabriel away from his charge. "Hands off this one, or I have a wooden stake with your name on it."

"Good Dad, Dean! I was just joshing the kid. Josh was another guy you wanted to stay away from," Gabriel said, turning his head easily back in Cora's direction, even with Dean had a white-knuckled grip on him. "Guy was such a stickler for details, always asking, "Are we there yet?" Ugh. Now, Daniel, he was pretty cool. When I hung out with him in the lion's den, he actually wanted pizza. I tell you, you can't ask for a better guy than the kind who wants you to fetch a pizza when being stared down by eight hungry lions. That was after Shad, Mish and Abe invented it with me in the furnace. Now those guys…"

"Gabriel, is there a reason you are here?" Castiel asked, trying to get a handle on the situation.

Gabriel put his hand against his heart. "I'm hurt, Cas. Do I have to have a reason to want to see you and the Sinchester boys here?"

Dean was still holding Gabriel by the neck, but it was obvious that it was harder for him than for the archangel.

"Um, Deano, ya wanna loosen that grip a bit? You're just gonna knock yourself out and I think we all agree that would be a _leeetle_ embarrassing for you."

Dean let go and raked his hand through his short hair. "Fine!" His breathing was irregular, his face flushed. Cora wasn't sure if she should laugh or cry. Gabriel just looked frustratingly amused.

Sam took a different approach. "Gabriel, did you need something?"

Gabriel gave his little close-mouthed pouty smile again and held up a candy. "Jolly Rancher, Sam? Watermelon. Your favorite." The last sentence was sing-songed.

Sam sighed and took the candy. "Thanks."

"See how easy it is to be polite, _Dean_?" Gabriel asked, his voice rough with apparent exasperation. "Dad, you'd think I was asking for the moon or something. Just a little common courtesy. To answer your question, it seems that the Allfather is having a little tussle with the Ifrit, and he wanted me to make sure that you guys accomplish your task of protecting the children of Edgar Roth against the Djinn." Cora had never seen—heard—someone use their voice the way he did, so expressively, almost as though it were another hand that he could gesture with. Cora had an odd idea that he could say something with those annoying little air quotes without making the quotes with his fingers, and everyone would know that was what he was doing.

"You're letting Odin order you around?" Castiel asked, his tone indicating that this was unusual. Of course, Cora could only remember a few legends where Loki actually ever did anything Odin asked of him, and it usually benefitted Loki as much if not more than Odin and the Aesir.

"Puh-lease, baby brother. I'm here because you and the Sinchesters were hanging out together, and I hate being left out." Gabriel plopped himself back down next to Cora and gave her a wink. "So, you've been hanging with Sammy and Dean, huh? In their hotel room no less. See anything interesting?" he waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "I have a theory that Sam's abs are positively edible."

Sam nearly choked on his Jolly Rancher. "Gabriel!" he breathed.

"Brother, I believe your sexual innuendo makes Sam uncomfortable," Castiel said. "And their last name is Winchester."

"Um, so…" Cora began, "you guys just sort of know angels"—"I'm an ARCHangel," Gabriel pouted—"and archangels and stuff, and they just pop in on you whenever they feel like it and then you kill bad things and this is your life?" Being a teenager, she sort of felt she had a license to be blunt and strike down straight to the heart of any matter within seconds. She had little use for what her mother deemed "Small Talk."

"We do not always pop in on them. Sometimes we watch over them when they are not aware of our presence," Castiel offered helpfully.

"Dude, so creepy when you _Twilight_ me," Dean shuddered.

"Yeah, really," Sam agreed. "But to answer your question, Cora, yes, this is the way our lives are, and this is why your dad was never involved in your life. It's too dangerous. About three quarters of the people we know have died, and kids are usually out of the question."

"He really gets into this touchy-feely stuff," Gabriel confided to Cora. "Usually he's hugging someone by now." Sam gave Gabriel a look that only made Gabriel smirk harder. "Tell me you don't think he's adorable."

"Yes, yes, we all just think he's adorable," Dean groused. "Gabriel, are you really going to stick around?"

"What can I say, I want to help!"

Dean smiled and handed him a wrapped package. "Good, because we need to get some sigils on the windows."

Gabriel narrowed his eyes. "Well played, Dean-O."

"Yeah, that's probably going to come back to bite me in the ass later."

"Don't you wish," the archangel grumbled, taking the package and opening it to reveal all the items needed for drawing warding sigils.

Cora was starting to get used to the idea of Djinn and angels…and archangels… She was pretty sure that Gabriel wouldn't approve of her referring to him as merely an angel, even in her thoughts. As she mulled this over, the archangel in question turned to her and gave her the slightest of winks.

Cora colored and looked away hastily. So he could read her mind.

_Yes, Fledgling, I can read your mind_, was the strange thought that drifted into her head.

Oh my God.

_I appreciate the promotion, Cookie, but I'm just an archangel and a trickster. No more, no less._

But…God…with a big G…He—She?—existed?

_Technically, we're genderless. Or, rather, you could say we are imbued with both genders. We call each other "brother" more often than not, though some of us don't care what gender our vessel is. When Castiel took a vessel, he didn't really care either way. To answer your question about The Father, He does exist, and we do call Him Father, though His title in our language, like everything else, is genderless. _

"Hey, you doin' okay there, kid?" Dean asked, breaking the thought bubble Cora and Gabriel had shared.

Cora shook her head and suddenly felt very odd, like she was sinking back to earth. She hadn't realized that she had gone rather slack in her posture, and that her eyes had closed. She shot a look at Gabriel who shrugged as if to say, "Sorry, kiddo."

"I'm fine, Dean, thanks." She tried a half-hearted smile at him, but he looked like he didn't believe her. He sat next to her on the bed and cleared his throat like he was slightly uncomfortable.

"Look, I know you've been through a lot in the past twenty-four hours, but you are going to get through this, we are going to make sure you're okay, and you'll be back with your family, living a completely normal life again in no time. Okay?"

As if she could live a normal life after all of this. Across the room, Gabriel gave a little snort of agreement and Castiel shuffled a little uncomfortably. So _he_ could read her mind too. The angel cocked his head ever so slightly in agreement and Gabriel shoved an entire Heath bar into his mouth. Cora just sighed heavily.

"I'll be okay, Dean. Thank you."

_He's not as good with the touchy-feely stuff as Sammy is,_ Gabriel confided silently, which made the corners of Cora's lips turn upwards ever so slightly.

No, Dean was definitely the shove-it-down-and-do-the-job kind of guy. But she had a feeling there might be hidden depths to plumb.

_Trust me, Cookie, you _do not_ want to go probing into that business. Cas here has a hard enough time trying to keep Dean-O from self-destructing. _

**_Taking care of Dean is a privilege, _**Castiel's voice suddenly joined Gabriel's, and Cora gasped, eliciting a sharp look from both Winchester brothers.

Gabriel cleared his throat. "So, Cora, I bet you have some questions you'd like to voice." _Aloud…we can talk more later._

"It's a lot to take in all at once," Cora said. "I mean, if God Big G is real, then what about evolution? And what do you angels do?"

"God and evolution are not mutually exclusive, though I know many humans would disagree," Castiel said. "As for what we do, all of us have different jobs."

"Angels don't normally get involved in human affairs," Sam explained.

"Castiel's crush on Dean is pretty much what keeps him involved with the Sinchester boys," Gabriel supplied with another cheeky wink.

Dean rolled his eyes at this and Castiel remained stone-faced, though neither one denied such a thing.

"I am the guardian of both Dean _and_ Sam," Castiel pointed out, as though that was a distinction.

Gabriel had the same train of thought and said it out loud. "You guard Sam because of Dean, and we all know it, Li'l Bro." he put a hand on Castiel's arm as if to placate him. "It's okay, Cas, I'm sure Sam understands."

Sam huffed a sigh in response and once again tried to steer the conversation. "Gabriel, she's got enough on her plate right now without trying to figure out when you're joking and when you're serious. Let's just help answer Cora's questions as best we can."

"Fine, but only because you asked so _nicely_." This last part was pointed towards Dean, who sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Cora sort of felt that she had an obligation to ask another question, so she did. "Castiel, are you their, like, Guardian Angel, then?"

"I am not a Guardian Angel, I am a Warrior Angel, though I do consider myself to be the guardian of Dean and Sam."

"Castiel had a job to pull Dean out of Hell, but as it has been mentioned more times than should _really_ be necessary, he fell for Dean"—"I simply fell, end of story," Castiel interrupted—"and decided to stick around rather than going back to his normal duties. Well, you know, there was that whole Purgatory fiasco, but I think Dad's forgiven him by now."

"I did learn my lesson and am a humbler angel because of it," Castiel agreed, though what he was agreeing to was a mystery to Cora.

"You're a fallen angel?" Cora wondered aloud. "Does that make you a demon?"

Gabriel shook his head. "No, no, demons are a whole other can of noodles."

"Worms," Sam said.

"Huh?"

"Worms. Whole other can of worms. You said noodles."

"Why in Dad's name would anyone want to can worms?" Gabriel asked with a disgusted look on his face and popped a Riesen into his mouth as if to dispel a bad taste from it. "Riesen?" he offered Sam, holding out the little black-wrapped candy. "Caramel on the inside, chocolate on the outside, fantastic all the way through."

"Thanks, man," Sam said, taking the candy and popping it down in similar fashion to what Gabriel had done.

"This is surprising, Sammy," Gabriel said. "You eat all healthy, do your calisthenics every morning, jog your hundred miles or whatever a day, but you have a real sweet tooth, don't you?"

"Whoa, dude, you know a little too much about my brother," Dean said, menace in his voice.

Gabriel just raised an eyebrow. "I might say the same thing about _you_ and my brother, Dean-o."

For the first time since Gabriel had imposed himself onto their little party, Dean reacted to his innuendo. It was only a slight coloring of the cheeks, a flare of the nostrils and a decided glower, but the response seemed to buoy Gabriel's spirits and his cat-like smirk became even more pronounced. Dean seemed to understand that he had just played directly into the trickster's hands and grumbled, "_Sonofabitch_" very quickly under his breath.

"Are you quite done, Brother?" Castiel asked.

"For now," was the smirking reply. Cora got the very distinct impression of a predator toying with its prey. _Chel-O! Tuh-rickster! _

She _felt_ a flash of annoyance from Castiel.

Okay, what the heck was going on here?

"Hey, Deano, Sammy?" Gabriel asked innocently, his eyes on Cora, unblinking. "The kid here is getting a little hungry. Why don't you boys toddle on down to the Gas N' Sip down the road and find her something nutritious?"

Dean scoffed. "I'm not leaving _you_ alone with her."

"The child will be perfectly safe, Dean. I will watch over her," Castiel said. "And I believe there is a diner just further down from the Gas N' Sip that might be more palatable."

"They might have pie," Gabriel pushed. "Apple, cherry, blueberry. Who cares so long as it's pie, right?"

Dean and Sam both frowned. "What are you up to?" Sam asked.

Gabriel sighed theatrically and said, "Fine, I'll go with Cas to pick up the food, okay? I forgot how paranoid you both were."

"No, I'll go," Dean said, frown still in place. "Come on, Sam."

Sam followed his brother, leaving Cora to stare at the angels. "Why wouldn't you talk in front of them?"

"Sam and Dean are very suspicious of the intention of any creature, human or monster. They view angels at the monster end of the spectrum," Castiel said. "My friendship with them notwithstanding."

"Hold out your hand, Cora," Gabriel instructed, producing a red piece of string from seemingly nowhere.

"What's this for?" she asked as he knotted the string around her wrist.

"Well, many cultures believe it wards off the Evil Eye, but really, the way it's knotted is a sigil that helps creatures like us keep from peering into your noggin," Gabriel explained, drawing a little design on the back of her hand with his finger. The design shimmered golden for a moment, and then disappeared.

"Was that a swastika?" Cora nearly screeched.

"Absolutely not," Castiel said quickly. "Unfortunately, that symbol has become one of hatred and genocide, but for many millennia, a similar mark has been used for peace symbols and also for a sigil against evil."

"The universe loves irony," Gabriel said in a sarcastic tone. "So, now you've got some externals working in your favor, we need to work on the internals. You, my dear fledgling, have never had a reason to close off your mind, so just about anything can wander in or out. Cas and I are hearing your thoughts simply because you don't know how to stop us. The sigils will help, but you sort of have to do the rest."

"If Sam or Dean even _suspected_ that we had been speaking with you in your mind, they would put up sigils warding against us as well," Castiel said softly. "As Dean puts it, no one should be messing around inside your grapefruit."

"That man should write poetry," Gabriel snarked. "What do you _see_ in him, Cassie?"

Castiel sighed and gave his brother an annoyed look.

"Even the kid has noticed that you two don't deny it," Gabriel needled again.

"Cora, please think something so I can see if I pick up on it," Castiel said, ignoring his brother.

The thought came unbidden. _Sam's cuter than Dean, though._

Gabriel snickered. _Tell me about it, sister._

**_This is highly inappropriate. I don't believe either brother would appreciate us discussing them in this way._**

_Cassie, you really need to get laid. _

Oh em gee, enough!

Both angels—well, angel and archangel—took a step back from Cora, surprise on their faces.

"Looks like she's figuring it out," Gabriel said, a satisfied look on his face. Castiel was glaring at him, however. The brothers exchanged a look, but Cora couldn't hear what they were saying. Suddenly, they both turned to her, eyebrows raised.

"Were you thinking anything just now?" Castiel asked.

"Yes, I was," Cora said. "Did you hear it?"

An almost-smile ghosted Castiel's lips. "No, we did not."

Well, thank God for that.

_Heard that. _

Drat.

Gabriel's laughter filled her head, interrupted only when Dean and Sam came back laden with bags and cartons and a box with an entire French apple pie in it. Sam set up the tiny table in the corner while Dean grilled Cora about her time alone with Gabriel, making sure that no untoward advances were made and that nothing inappropriate had been said.

Cora reassured him as best she could, and kept Gabriel's comment about Castiel requiring a good lay to herself. She was slightly curious about what Dean's reaction might be to Gabriel sexually harassing Castiel, but she was sure it wouldn't be good.

_He'd find a way to kill me for sure,_ Gabriel thought into her head. _You drop your defenses when you're busy or not paying attention. Stop that. _

Cora sighed. Gabriel might be annoying, but for different reasons than why Dean found him annoying.

_Why, Cookie, I didn't know you cared. _

She suddenly sent up a fervent prayer that she wouldn't dream that night, and her only answer was more amused laughter from Gabriel and a promise from Castiel that they wouldn't pay attention to her dreams.

**Let's face it: would you want Gabe in your dreams? Okay, bad example. The answer is yes, we all know the answer is yes. **


	3. In which Castiel likes Star Trek

Cora did dream that night. She dreamt she was flying, or rather hovering above Dean and Castiel as they shared a conversation. Something dark and cloudy was behind Castiel, and Cora had a strange thought that she must be seeing his wings, only they were blurry and smoky.

"Gabriel and I would like to train Cora to ward her mind against external invasion."

"Why? What's going on?" Dean sounded very suspicious.

"Cora is…blessed. Humans such as you and Sam grew up learning subterfuge from a very early age. No offense, but deceit and deflection come very easily to you. Out of necessity, certainly, but the two of you understand what is out there. Cora was raised in a family that is open and caring, and aside from the usual childhood lies, she has never had a reason to close herself off from anyone. Her thoughts are an open book to anyone that might try to look, and she has no defenses against the Djinn. All one would have to do is touch her in order to invade her mind and capture her completely."

"You two can read her _mind_?" Dean now sounded extremely concerned.

Castiel was clearly trying to placate him. "Gabriel put a few sigils on her earlier, so we currently cannot hear her as much as when we first encountered her, but when she thinks about us specifically, we hear her without any issue."

Dean sighed. "How do you teach someone to have a less-open mind?"

"We would alert her as to when we could hear her thoughts, and help her stop the bleed-through. Think of it as…Occlumency."

"What-umency?"

"Occlumency. From _Harry Potter_."

"You're reading _Harry Potter_?"

"Sam thought I might enjoy the books. He was right. That little Ginny Weasley…"

"Let me get this straight: I can't get you to watch the new _Star Trek_ movie with me, but you'll read _Harry Potter_ for Sam?"

Castiel shrugged. "I like _The Next Generation_ better than the original series."

"Some boyfriend you are."

Castiel pulled his eyebrows together, wrinkling his forehead. "Dean, I didn't know it meant that much to you."

Dean threw his hands in the air and turned away from Castiel. "Yeah, well, never mind. Just tell me about the kid."

"There's not much to tell. She has a lot of thoughts, sometimes more than one at the same time, but if she thinks about either me or Gabriel, we hear her. We just want to help her learn to be less open."

"I don't know, man. You know how I feel about spooks fiddling around inside people's grapefruit."

"Dean, if we don't help her, then that will likely be her fate. The only reason you were able to fight the Djinn and survive on several occasions is because you are adept at closing your mind against external invasion. Most humans do not stand even a chance."

"Cas, this girl has a chance at a normal life. I mean, she plays the oboe for chrissakes. I don't even know what an oboe is!"

"She _will have_ a normal life, Dean. Learning to close off your mind is not the same thing as picking up a machete and going after a hive of vampires. It is something she will have learned after adolescence regardless. We are simply speeding up the process."

Cora felt sort of sad for some reason. On one hand, it was embarrassing to think of Castiel and Gabriel being able to hear what she was thinking whenever they felt like listening. On the other hand, she sort of liked hearing their comments and banter. If they succeeded, she had a feeling she'd never hear them in the same way again.

_Sorry, Cookie. This whole trip is a one way ticket._

Cora was startled to see that she was floating beside Gabriel. Or maybe she _was_ Gabriel. She could see his wings, like a blur of lightning behind him.

_You're thinking about me, so you're with me. You were thinking about Castiel, so now you're seeing the conversation he had with Dean. _

She didn't see how she could just turn this off.

_We're close to each other right now. That's why it's working so well. When we part ways, both Cas and I should be far enough away that you will barely register as a unique human amid the noise of all the other humans around us._

Just one more lonely voice in a sea of voices. It seemed sad to her.

_It's not that bad, kiddo. The alternative is living like the Winchesters there, and no sane person chooses that path willingly._

She agreed with that assessment. The only way she was keeping from freaking out, especially right now, was the hope that she would awake and find it all a dream.

It didn't seem likely, but it was a hope.

_I think it's time for you to go back to sleep, Cookie._

It was the last thought or dream she had until she awoke the next morning.

Cora knew, when she woke up, that it hadn't been a dream. Neither Gabriel nor Castiel had acted strange around her, but there was just something in her head that told her it hadn't been a dream. It wasn't until after she ate the pancakes Sam brought her that Gabriel explained it to her.

"You were thinking about us, and in your dream state, you were able to visit us because you haven't learned to close your mind down."

"Why me, though?" She asked. "Why weren't any other humans there? Surely there are hundreds around here, dreaming with their minds wide open."

"It's not that simple," Gabriel said. "Firstly, you're still a child, in the scheme of things. Yes, I know you're however many _tens_ of years old, but you are a child, and children are more open than adults. Secondly, you know us, so you're just naturally slightly more open than others. But there have been humans who have happened upon us like you did last night. We usually shut them down pretty quickly. _That_ kind can get dangerous, when they seem to think that they have a gateway to angels."

"Oh," Cora said a little lamely as the implications hit her. The idea of religious nutjobs believing that they were getting divine visions was disconcerting. She looked up at Gabriel and noticed his regard of her. "Sorry, did you hear that?"

He smiled. Not a smirk, but a genuine smile. "Nope. Looks like you're getting better at this, Cookie."

Dean was not into Gabriel's nickname for Cora. Sam sort of laughed it off, but Dean looked at the nickname as just one step closer to the archangel attempting to "Take [Cora's] dragon bait," a phrase that she didn't even _want_ to consider.

"You are depraved, Dean Winchester. Depraved," Gabriel bitched. "You know, you cogent hairless monkeys are barely tolerable when you finally leave adolescence behind—and by the way, you appear to still be firmly in the middle of it—but your fledglings are not desirable to us at all." He then turned to Cora. "No offense, Cookie. But compared to angels, the oldest adult human is an infant. You children barely register." Then he turned to Castiel. "Once again, baby bro, what do you _see_ in this guy?"

"Gabriel—"

Gabriel gave a very theatrical sigh. "Cue Castiel defending his girlfriend's honor."

"Gabriel!" Sam shouted. Gabriel actually looked up at him. "Gabe, seriously, you and Dean need to knock it off. You're upsetting me, Cora, and Castiel with your constant bickering"—"Yeah, don't mention how he's bugging me," Dean interjected—"and it is pointless and childish. Yes, oh Eternal Being, _you_ are being _childish_."

"Why don't you two get along well, anyway?" Cora asked. "I mean, you have so much in common."

The angry glares she received from that statement made her visibly wilt. Had it not been for Sam and Castiel, she probably would have started crying.

"This…_joker_…killed me off about a thousand different ways one time," Dean explained. "It was one of the worst times of my brother's life, and, you know what, Gabe? He _still_ has nightmares about me dying because of you."

Gabriel's expression changed from hard and exasperated to concerned. "Is that true, Sammy?" For once, his tone wasn't sarcastic or cutting.

Sam sighed. "I…of course I have nightmares about Dean dying. I mean, we've both died so many times, it's sort of inevitable…but yeah. The ways you killed him off were pretty brutal. I mean, I even killed him myself three times during that Groundhog Day, and even though he's still kicking, I still feel pretty guilty about that."

Cora stared in open fascination at Sam. "You watched Dean die a thousand different ways? Really? That many?" She couldn't imagine someone doing that to little Ben. She'd hate Gabriel, too.

_Don't say that, Cookie._

But it was true. She loved her brother so much, to think of watching him die was unbearable. To think of watching him die multiple times? And be responsible even once? She'd do more than just have nightmares. She'd probably feel downright suicidal.

"I'm sorry, Sam. I'm sorry, Dean."

Even Castiel looked at Gabriel in surprise.

"You're sorry?" Dean asked, his voice full of wonder. "You're sorry," he repeated, crossing his arms over his chest and stroking his lower lip. "You."

"Yes, _me_." Gabriel gave a face that rivaled one of Sam's better tight-faced glowers. "I…I was a trickster for so long, I forgot what it was to be an archangel, and what it was to be friendly towards humanity. That was sort of Thor's job most of the time." Gabriel then looked around the room and considered the other faces. "Sam, I, uh…I'm sorry. Really."

He disappeared, as quickly as he had appeared.

Cora thought his name really hard and even considered unknotting the red cord on her wrist so he could hear her better, but she stopped before doing that. He probably wouldn't want to her to, and he was probably too far away to hear her anyway.

Silence reigned in the hotel room for a very long time as the remaining four beings stared at each other with wide-eyed looks.

Dean was the first one to speak. "Cas, how screwed are we right now?"

"I…do not follow, Dean. Screwed in what way?"

"With your brother, one of the most powerful beings in existence suddenly gone, have our chances for getting Cora to Bobby's house just died?"

"I believe that we can still arrive at Bobby's house quite safely, Dean," Castiel said.

They left the hotel shortly after that. Dean insisted that they would drive through the night in order to make it to Bobby's house before dawn the next morning. He had actually been originally intending on just powering through to South Dakota, but when Castiel showed up, he had realized how distraught Cora had been, and reasoned that she needed just a little more time to get used to all of this, so he had agreed to stop for the night. Now they were ten hours behind on what should have been a simple twenty-hour trip, and he clearly hated being behind on time.

Cora felt guilty for being the cause of the delay, but Sam had stopped her from dwelling on it too much. "Dean likes to drive, and sometimes we have to force him to slow down a bit. Besides, Castiel started helping you to guard your mind, and that's pretty much the only defense most humans have against the Djinn."

Cora pulled at the red string on her wrist, and Sam took her hand to look at it.

"Who gave you this?" he asked, amusement tinting his voice.

"Gabriel did," Cora whispered. "Sam, I'm so sorry…I shouldn't have…It's my fault he left!"

Sam actually scoffed at this. "It's not your fault. You were right: both Dean and Gabe are too much like each other, and they drive each other crazy half the time. Plus, Gabriel's job for thousands of years was knowing how to push people's buttons. He's _really_ freakin' good at it, too, and unfortunately for Dean, he has a _lot_ of buttons and Gabriel just can't help himself around him."

Cora smiled. "You and Castiel seem to be the only buttons he really has," she mused.

"Trust me, he has loads more. Those are just the biggest ones."

Since Dean was currently in the shower (singing a song about being wanted: dead or alive that Cora didn't recognize, though she had a feeling that would change very soon, if his radio choices had anything to say about it), she felt safe saying, "Why doesn't Gabriel push any of your buttons, Sam? I mean…it's almost like he likes you. Not…not _like_-like you, but like he respects you or something."

"Yeah, I asked him about that one time." He looked like he was seriously considering whether he should tell her Gabriel's answer or not. "Oh, it's not like spending the last eighteen hours with us hasn't already scarred you for life. He said, "Deano's just so ugly when he's angry, dontcha think, Sammy boy?"" Sam started laughing. "Oh, man…yeah…and he said, "But you, you only get prettier, and I'm not sure I can contain myself around such striking beauty."" Sam shook his head. "Really, though? I think he respects that he didn't break me. I mean, yeah, I was a wreck by the end of my Groundhog Day and if I had to watch Dean die in front of me one more time, I probably would have slit my wrists, but the fact that I didn't really impressed him."

The door to the bathroom opened and Dean came out shirtless, droplets of water still clinging to his high-and-tight hair. "Man, how did I get a huge cut in my favorite Def Leppard shirt?" he groused, holding it up and shoving two fingers into the slit in the shoulder.

"Um…if you would take a look at your very naked chest, Dean, you'd see a matching scar along your shoulder where you let some monster get the drop on you," Sam said. "Now, if you wouldn't mind putting on a shirt of any sort, or I don't think little Cora here will ever be satisfied by another man."

Dean looked up to find Cora staring at him open-mouthed, unable to even feel embarrassed at her blatant ogling. He just shook his head at her and pulled a t-shirt over his head in an annoyed way.

Oh, Gabriel…if only you were here. I think I know what Castiel sees in Dean, and it has nothing to do with his soulful brooding, dubious taste in music, or terrible fashion sense. Oh. Em. Gee.

She remembered Gabriel's highly inappropriate comments about Sam's workout routine, and figured that the archangel probably knew exactly how many packs Dean had on his abs (more than six! You could have more than six! Why had no one seen fit to inform her of this? And why had she never looked for herself? She was a teenager for crying out loud! She was morally obligated to know these things!) and how he compared to his brother.

Gabriel's nickname of the "Sin-Chesters" suddenly made a little more sense.

She stole a look at Castiel who was stoically staring straight ahead as he normally did, seemingly at nothing, and decided that he looked just a little smug. He didn't, of course, but she liked to think that he did. It would be something Gabriel would likely tease him about.

"Hey, li'l bro," he might say, "if you ever need help saving him in the future…" Or, no, that would be too appreciative of Dean's attributes. He would be more merciless about how just very apparently disgusting he would find the whole thing. "Cassie, bro, he does know he doesn't have to cart a washboard around with him everywhere he goes, right? Or is that why their clothes smell so bad?"

Cora smiled to herself, imagining what Gabriel might say. Of course, she then belatedly realized that Castiel might be able to hear her, and she blushed.

_**Yes, I can hear you. And I am starting to think that perhaps it is best that my brother left us. He seems to have made…too much of an impression on you.**_

Cora sighed. Looks like she still needed to work at not projecting her thoughts.

"All right, kid, you ready to go?" Dean asked.

"Yup, let's go," she said with a cheery smile, hoping she wouldn't feel awkward around Dean. Of course, he probably was used to people going gaga over him. She knew for sure that Gabriel would have something cheeky to say about that. Probably something like, "If he had a nickel for every time someone stared at him in lust, he'd have a million bucks." And then because he couldn't give Dean a compliment that wasn't back-handed, he'd add, "Just ask him," with one of those cheeky smirks that would send any cat into throes of jealousy.

She sat in the back seat behind Sam, and Castiel sat beside her. She almost laughed at the fact that Castiel did not sit up front with Dean, but then reasoned that it was because Sam's legs were so long, and there was no way he could fold himself in the back seat for this long of a trip. He barely folded himself into the front seat, and she was sure that if he were driving instead of Dean, there wouldn't be room for Castiel's legs at all.

She realized once more that she was thinking about him, so she looked over at him apologetically. Castiel stared back impassively. "Are you well, Cora?"

"You didn't hear me?"

He raised an eyebrow just slightly. "No. Were you thinking about me?"

Cora frowned. "Not really. Sort of. I was just thinking that if Sam was driving, there probably wouldn't be room back here because he'd have to push the seat all the way back."

Castiel nodded. "Yes, that is an astute observation. When Sam drives, I must move to the other side of the car."

"But you didn't hear my thoughts?"

"No."

"Would you have? Normally?"

"As it was a thought about me, yes, I would have normally. You are learning, it appears."

Cora felt pretty smug as she sank into the leather seats and stared out the window.

The drive was pretty monotonous, especially once they left Chicago and hit Iowa. The landscape was flat and drab, and since Dean tended to stay off the major highways, they passed lots of sleepy farms, small towns, and long stretches of absolutely nothing. Naturally, she fell asleep.

"Dean was once kidnapped by a Djinni," Gabriel said from beside her. Cora started and stared at him, realizing that once again she was having a strange dream. "The Djinn don't really grant wishes," Gabriel continued. "They have a sort of neurotoxin that they transmit by touch, and it gives you the desires of your heart."

Cora looked at the back of Dean's head, currently bopping along in time to Manfred Mann's "Blinded By The Light." "What did Dean want?"

Gabriel suddenly looked very sad, very old. His lips turned down and his whole demeanor changed. Cora suddenly _saw_ for the first time that this was an eternal being next to her. "Dean wanted his family."

When he didn't elaborate, Cora asked, "He wants a wife and kids?"

Gabriel's expression got sadder. "No. He wanted his mother back. He wanted his father to have a normal death. He wanted Sammy to get engaged to the girl of his dreams. Dean…those are the extent of his wishes."

Cora watched as Dean reached over to where Sam was dozing against the window and pulled his brother's jacket up just a bit where it had slipped down his arm. He then flicked his eyes to the backseat to make sure no one was looking and gave Sam a quick pat on the shoulder, then resumed driving like nothing had happened.

"Why are you telling me this?" Cora looked back at Gabriel, but he was gone, and her perspective was different. It had been as though she were sitting up just moments ago, but now she was leaning against the corner of the backseat, sprawled out under Castiel's trench coat.

Castiel turned to Cora and gave her what was surely supposed to be a smile, but he didn't really _do_ smiles. "We have just entered South Dakota," he said amicably.

Cora sat up and looked out the window. "Oh." Gabriel?

No answer. So maybe it really was just a weird dream.

"Um…Cas?"

"Yes, Dean."

"Hey, do you see that building up there? Does it look like a ruin to you?"

Castiel leaned down and frowned as he stared out the window. "Get the girl to Bobby's house. I'll meet up with you when I can," he said.

Cora wondered what it meant.

**Why does Castiel prefer TNG to TOS? We may never know, but I think he likes the dynamics between Geordi and Data better than those between Spock and Kirk. Or maybe he is just really in awe of Riker's beard-growing prowess. **


	4. In which Dean impersonates the Pizza Man

**Have I mentioned that Bobby is in this story? 'Cause Bobby's in this story.**

Bobby Singer wasn't a very large man, but Cora's first impression of him was that of a giant. His house was a large two-story shingled thing with a wide porch along the front, and Bobby was striding across it, fire practically flying from his eyes as he approached Sam and Dean.

"Where the hell have you idjits been?" he shouted, bounding down the steps and practically yanking the back door of the car open. "I thought you said Castiel was with you?" he said as he gently pulled Cora from the backseat. "Hey, Darlin', everything's gonna be okay now, a'ight? Now you boys get back out there and meet up with Garth and Chris. They're in Colorado."

Dean and Sam both got out of the car. "Bobby, just hold on a second!" Dean said.

Bobby turned, his hand still gentle on Cora's arm. "You still here, boy?"

Dean sighed and rested his arms on the roof of the car. "Bobby, we spotted a ruin on the way in. Cas is checking it out for us. We might be more useful here."

Cora suddenly found herself being pulled tightly against Bobby's side. "Inside, everyone."

In the house, Bobby poured a glass of lemonade for each of them. Sam and Dean immediately took their cup and drank, and then Cora followed suit when it was obvious that it was expected of her.

"You couldn't have added a little something to it?" Dean grimmaced, looking inside the glass.

"I made it with holy water. Can't exactly hand the kid my usual whiskey," Bobby growled. "Okay, where's this ruin?"

Cora stared around herself as Bobby and the boys pored over a map and a few books of lore. The house was dark and drab, but it was really interesting. Every bookcase, every corner, every shelf held something that drew her eye. Books, journals, intricately carved bowls, signs painted on the walls or carved into the woodwork, candles, charms, baggies of what looked like bones, paintings and prints depicting various mythological scenes, and so much that she didn't understand but wanted to get up and look at.

"Be careful in here," Bobby said, as if he could sense her restless energy. "There's a lot in here that you really shouldn't touch, so please just start with the assumption that whatever you're looking at is dangerous and govern yourself accordingly."

Cora nodded. "Yes, sir," she whispered because that was what the brothers said to him. Besides, Bobby might be scruffy and bearded and dressed in a flannel shirt and dirty baseball cap, but he commanded respect.

Bobby smiled in return. "Okay, up the stairs, turn left, go to the door at the end of the hall. That'll be your room while you're here. Make yourself at home, look around, do whatever. Don't go outside, and don't go down to the basement."

"Yes, sir," she said again, feeling thoroughly dismissed.

The room was like the rest of the house: dark and old and faded, but full of information.

There were two twin beds in the room. Like most of the woodwork in the house, they had sigils carved into them. Cora recognized the one used for anti-possession, and one for protection, but the rest were just jumbles of symbols and shapes. There were dream catchers hung above the headboards that looked handmade with actual gold and precious gems strung into them. One had the initial "D" on it, and the other had the initial "S". Cora reached up to Dean's and pulled it down off of its hook, then sat on what was apparently his bed and just stared, trying to understand.

The room was not a room for adults. If even Dean were to try and lay on the bed, his feet would fall off the edge. Sam would be comically too large. And then she saw on the headboard, amidst the other carvings, the name "DEAN" etched in a childish way. Curious, she approached the second bed and found that Sam had scratched his name into the headboard as well, along with the admonition, "KEEP OFF DEAN" and underneath that in a messy marker scrawl that had been wiped away but not obliterated completely, "SAMANTHA: SLEEPING BEAUTY".

Curious, Cora went back to Dean's bed and found in a more childish hand, "DEANNA: SNOW WHITE."

There was one photograph in the room. It was of a much younger Bobby with Dean and Sam when they were children, and a man behind them who looked a lot like Dean. Curious, she pulled the photo out of the frame and turned it over. In a neat print in ballpoint pen were the words, "John, Dean and Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer, August 1989."

Secure in her surroundings, Cora went back downstairs to collect her belongings. She could hear Bobby in the kitchen saying. "No, you did right. You couldn't go with Cas with the girl in the backseat, but I think you'd better get back down there and give him a hand if he's fightin'. There's fresh lamb's blood in the icebox, and I got about ten sharp silver knives in the study."

Cora picked up her oboe case and her bag (it had all been packed by her father, so she wasn't entirely sure what was in it beyond every pair of underpants she ever owned) when she heard the strangest sound like the fluttering of wings behind her.

"Cora…"

Cora turned to find Castiel bloody and near faint.

"Dean!" she screeched, dropping her oboe case (what her music teacher didn't know wouldn't hurt her) and going over to him. Castiel grabbed her shoulders and she did what she could to support him, but in the short few seconds that it took for the three men to come running in from the kitchen, she was already sinking to the ground with the angel.

"Cas!" Dean cried, pushing Cora out of the way and kneeling in front of the angel. "Jesus, what happened?"

"Don't let him bleed all over my rug, ya idjit!" Bobby admonished. "Bring him into the kitchen so we can take care of the bleeding until he can heal himself."

Dean pulled Castiel upright and supported him into the kitchen where Castiel sank onto a chair. Sam threw the first aid kit at his brother, who caught it without even looking and cracked it open.

"Tell me you killed the bastard after all this, Cas," Dean murmured as he pressed a piece of gauze over a gash in Castiel's shoulder.

"There were three. I was able to slay two, but the third has proven to be elusive."

"This is my fault, man," Dean nearly whispered. "I shouldn't have been a dick to Gabriel. He could have had your back on this one."

"Gabriel was there," Castiel said. Dean looked up at him from where he was kneeling on the floor. "He has gone in pursuit of the third."

"Is he coming back?" Sam asked, his voice anxious.

Castiel held the gauze in place while Dean worked to clean another wound. "I do not know. He said he was not sure he would be welcome."

Bobby grabbed Cora's arm to pull her out of the kitchen. "You listen to me, Dean: you're on your knees, so you start praying to Gabriel that he'll come back. Those sons of bitches managed to waste Cas like this, ain't no telling what might happen to the rest of us. We need him."

Sam turned with Bobby to follow him out the door. "And while you're praying, thank him for that time he let Lucifer gank him on our behalf, okay? I don't think you ever did."

Dean sighed heavily and looked at them. "Yeah, I know. I know, Sam. I know."

"Good," Sam said with a nod and then followed Bobby and Cora as they went back to the hallway.

"Does praying work?" Cora asked as she leaned over and picked up her things once more.

"It don't hurt none," Bobby answered. "And they hear it, even if they don't do nothin' about it."

"Is…is Castiel going to be okay?"

Sam nodded emphatically. "Oh, yeah, he'll be fine. He just…he probably used a lot of his mojo in fighting the Djinn, so he is sort of short on it right now. As soon as he rests a bit, he'll heal himself."

"Mojo?"

"Angel juice. It's what they run on."

"Christ, Sam," Bobby said. "You don't realize what a bunch of heathens we all are until some outsider comes around like this. Look at her face!"

Cora wasn't sure what her expression was exactly, but she was pretty sure that calling whatever Castiel had on him "Mojo" or "Angel Juice" could be considered blasphemous.

"Castiel calls it Grace," Sam said, his tone both placating and sarcastic at once. "Whatever it is, it's powerful and it comes from Heaven, but when he's here on earth, his batteries can run low. It looks like he used a lot to do what he did."

"But…he's going to be okay?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, he'll be fine. This isn't the first time he's been like this," Sam assured her. It didn't really make Cora feel any better. What did make her feel better was when Gabriel finally showed up about a half hour later. She didn't try to hide her relief at seeing him, she just threw herself into his arms, despite Sam's protest that he was hurt and she should leave him alone.

"I'm okay, Sammy," Gabriel said, pushing Cora away gently. There was a huge bloody gash above his eyes, but even as he was talking, it was healing.

"Gabriel," Castiel said, limping into the living room.

"Hey, little bro," Gabriel said with a smile, then reached out a hand and healed the rest of Castiel's wounds. "I'm sure I'm depriving Deano of some much-looked-forward-to TLC that he could be giving you," was the only snarky comment he made.

"Dean has cleaned my wounds," was Castiel's oblique comment. Thankfully, Gabriel reigned in whatever he wanted to say so there were no verbal sparring matches between him and Dean.

"Cora," Bobby said, "sweetheart, I need you to just go on up to your room for right now." When it looked like she was going to protest, Bobby held up his hand and continued in his same gentle voice. "Look, I ain't bein' sexist or ageist here. I'm being a realist. You don't know the first thing about fighting the Djinn, and those of us that do need to talk for a while and no offense, but I don't have time to prepare my boys and these angels to go out there if I have to field questions from the peanut gallery. Now, please, just go on upstairs and read a book or something. I'll explain everything to you later. That's a promise."

Cora knew she was outnumbered, especially when all Sam did was choose a book for her that he thought would keep her occupied, and Gabriel just gave her a saucy wink. The dried blood above his eyebrow did more to move her upstairs than anything else, though. If something was powerful enough to bleed an archangel, it must have been powerful indeed.

Cora wasn't really that interested in the book Sam had brought her, so she opened her oboe, stuck a reed between her lips and began to soften it while she put her instrument together. There were only a few pieces of music in her case; mostly chorale pieces as she wanted to try out for the Wind Quintet that spring, so she ran through her scales for a good ten minutes, tuned, and then sank into Bach's "_Wie Schön Leuchtet Der Morgestern."_ By the time she switched it out for the Brandenburg Concerto, she had a visitor.

"That's beautiful, Cookie," Gabriel said. "Almost reminds me of the old days in Heaven, before everything got completely messed up."

"You're leaving again," she said, somehow aware that the angels couldn't just hang around.

"Cassie and I are going to meet up with another hunter and your brother and bring them here like we did with you. So, uh…" he looked uncomfortable. "Look, I can't even pretend to understand human emotions, but try and remember that this other kid is your blood, okay? That has to mean something. I know you probably don't want to meet him, but…"

Cora nodded her head. "You're right; I don't want to meet him." She looked down at her sheet music. "I just want to go home, Gabe."

He pulled her into his arms as she started to cry. "Hey, now, Cookie. It's okay. You'll be home soon, and this will all just seem like some huge, horrible nightmare."

Instead of feeling better, Cora's sobbing got louder. She wasn't surprised when Bobby entered the room, but she was surprised to find that Dean and Sam weren't hot on his heels, trying to figure out if Gabriel had done something untoward to her.

"Cas is just about ready to leave, Gabriel," Bobby said.

Gabriel nodded and stroked Cora's hair. "Can you, uh…"

Bobby pulled Cora against his chest. "Come on, Cora," he almost crooned. "It'll be all right, darlin'. Now put a smile on your face and let's go down and say goodbye to Cas and Gabe."

Cora accepted a handkerchief from Gabriel and wiped her tears and blew her nose like they wanted her to do. Since he and Castiel were going to try and keep her safe, she owed it to them to put on a brave face.

Downstairs, Dean and Sam were a little anxious, but Bobby gave them a shrug to let them know that it wasn't Gabriel's fault that she was crying. Castiel reached out his hand and touched her tears, a confused expression on his face.

_He doesn't see many tears_, Gabriel explained.

_**Sam and Dean tend to be rather stoic when it comes to grief,**_ was Castiel's comment.

"She's a little homesick, is all," Bobby was telling the boys.

Castiel pulled his trench coat on. "I am ready, Gabriel."

"You stay safe, Cas, got it?" Dean commanded, his voice pretty gruff as he straightened Castiel's tie and smoothed his hands over his shoulders.

"Of course, Dean. I shall return to you."

Sam and Gabriel both turned away from the hunter and the angel, heading towards the foyer. Bobby followed, his arm firm around Cora's shoulders. She could only guess what was passing between the other two, and wished fervently that she could peek, but didn't think either Dean or Castiel would appreciate that. The only indication she had of what was happening was Dean's pronouncement of, "_That's_ what _I_ learned from the pizza man," and Castiel's deep chuckle. Sam rolled his eyes looking pained, and Gabriel appeared positively gleeful. Bobby just looked concerned.

"Ready, baby bro?"

Castiel nodded. "Yes."

There were no further goodbyes. They just left.

Bobby sighed. "All right, Cora sweetie, what's say you and me get some supper going while these two idjits make a supply run?"

Cora nodded. "Sure."

Sam frowned at Dean. "Hey, how come he calls her sweetie and darlin', and all we get called are idjits and morons?"

Bobby steered both boys, who both seemed twice his height and more than capable of taking him in a fight, towards the doors. "It's a-cause she's _purdy_ and she _smells_ nice," he groused, but in an affectionate way. "You two manage to accomplish even one of those things, and I'll happily call ya darlin'. Now git."

He gave them a friendly shove out the door, then closed it in their faces and locked it.

"Idjits," he grumbled under his breath. And then he cocked an eyebrow at Cora. "But they're _my_ idjits, so I guess that makes me even stupider than they are, eh?"

Cora managed a smile. "I like them, too."

"Ah, then I guess we're all stupid together. Now come on, let's get some meatloaf put together, and you can tell me all about that instrument you were playing. Ain't got many refinements around here, but I prefer Bach and Schubert to that crap Dean's always playing."

**I make Pizza Man references often, even to people who have no clue what I'm talking about. I figure it's their loss. **


	5. Here there be Djinn

By the time Dean and Sam returned with groceries from a store and an apple, a cherry, and a boysenberry pie from the local bakery, the smells coming from the kitchen were rivaling those that Cora's dad could get going. The boys exclaimed over and complimented every smell, pointedly comparing everything that was happening in the kitchen to Bobby's past fare, which they had no problem disparaging. At first, Cora was slightly embarrassed since what she had done wasn't too incredible, but then she realized that the boys and Bobby showed affection by sharing insults and relaxed a little.

"You put sour cream in the mashed potatoes?!" Dean exclaimed around a mouthful. Apparently he had gotten over the lack of gravy on the table, even though he had complained enough in the beginning that Bobby ended up pointing out that Dean was more than welcome to make his own damn gravy if he really wanted some.

"Ohmahgordifinkidied," Sam mumbled through a forkful of Brussels sprouts, sautéed just the way her father always did them.

Bobby just smiled. "Now you know why she gets the special treatment."

Dean had been eyeing and poking his sprouts for several minutes before he finally speared a half and tentatively bit. "Marry me," he groaned with a roll of his eyes.

"She likes me better," Sam teased. "Besides, Cas would smite her."

"I don't care, marry one of us and cook for both of us."

Cora just laughed. "We need two more first," she said.

Bobby raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I figure I have pale skin and dark hair, so I'm Snow White. Bobby can be Grumpy, Sam can be Happy, Castiel can be Bashful, Dean, you're Doc, Gabriel is Dopey because that's funny to think of him as Dopey, so we need a Sneezy and Sleepy."

"Garth's Dopey," all three men said at the same time.

"And really, Gabriel should be Tricky," Sam said.

"Yeah, but Cas is totally Bashful," Dean decided.

Bobby harrumphed. "I like how none of you object to me being Grumpy."

They spent the rest of the evening arguing over the merits of the Dwarf names, and finally decided that they should create their own as long as Castiel remained Bashful and Garth remained Dopey.

"I'm Handy because I actually know how to fix a car unlike some people who aren't so handy," Dean grumbled as he washed dishes.

"And I'm Brainy because I actually have something akin to _useful_ knowledge stuffed in my head," Sam shot back, drying the dishes.

Bobby harrumphed again. "I'm the one who taught you both everything you know." Bobby put dish after dish away in the cupboards. "And yet I'm the one who's Grumpy."

Cora just laughed until the dark outside was broken by the headlights of a car. Everything in Cora's throat closed up and she found she couldn't swallow, breathe, or even concentrate. Everything was closing around her.

She had a brother, and he was about to become a part of her world.

"Looks like Dopey and Sneezy made it," Bobby said. "Wonder where Tricksey and Bashful are?"

Garth was nothing like Cora was expecting. As a hunter, she figured he'd be more like Dean and Sam, full of brawn, tall, devilishly handsome and with a strong, commanding presence. When the waif-thin yet beanpole-tall man walked in the door, she was completely taken aback. The teenage boy behind him seemed more capable of killing a monster than he did. And yet, she knew to never underestimate hunters. She decided to take Bobby's advice to heart and assume Garth was deadly until proven otherwise.

Chris, her half-brother, looked a lot like her. Both her mother and father were light-haired and light-eyed, so for the first time in her life, she felt like she was looking at someone she belonged with.

He stared at her, too, though she wasn't sure what he was thinking. He was maybe two or three years older than her, so he was nearly a man, and he had her nose and her shape to his eyes, though his eyes were a tawny gold instead of blue.

Garth, like Dean and Sam, complained about the lemonade Bobby gave him and Chris not being strong enough, but Bobby just pointed out the beer in the fridge. All of the leftovers from dinner were placed before the two newcomers, and every bit was soon obliterated, as well as most of the rest of the pie, of which Sam and Dean had eaten a slice of each kind and Bobby had taken a large piece of the cherry.

Garth, Bobby and the boys spoke amicably while the second dinner was going on (both Dean and Sam suddenly realized they had room for another piece of meatloaf each, and they finished off the mashed potatoes when Garth and Chris decided they couldn't eat any more. The sprouts had been long gone by this point. Bobby called all of them idjits.), but Chris said nothing, just ate and stared at Cora, who stared back.

Soon, it was all over, the dishes were once again cleared away, washed, and put in their places. Then Bobby sent the boys and Garth out to meet up with Castiel and Gabriel, who had apparently found Djinn reinforcements close by, and then it was just him, Cora and Chris.

Bobby sat at the table with the kids. "All right, you two," he started, "let's just get this all out in the open: y'all don't know each other from Adam, y'all are probably a bit unsure of what to do with each other, and y'all are probably a bit miffed at your daddy. Well, that's that, though, ain't it? Ain't neither of your faults what's happened, so let's try and put that behind us. You two are blood. I've been faced with enough death and destruction that I know how important family is, so the least you two can do is be friendly."

Cora and Chris continued to stare at each other, but it was more out of open curiosity than animosity. Cora couldn't find it in her to dislike him, though she did wish she had met him as a potential friend rather than a sister. It was just so much pressure.

"I'm tired, Bobby," Cora said finally.

"Me too," Chris said.

Bobby nodded. "Okay. Cora, show Chris up to the room. Sorry, but you're going to have to share for a little while, unless one of you wants to bunk on the sofa."

"I'm fine sharing," Chris said.

Cora nodded. "Me too."

They made their way up the stairs, and then closed the bedroom door. Cora took her place on Dean's bed and Chris sat cross-legged on Sam's bed.

"I…uh," Cora said just as Chris said, "So, tell me…"

They stared for a moment more and then they both laughed humorlessly.

"You first," Cora said.

Chris nodded. "Okay. Um…what do you know about these Djinn?"

"They're powerful enough to hurt angels," Cora said. When Chris raised his eyebrows, she explained about Gabriel and Castiel.

"Yeah, they came to me and Garth when we were going through Colorado. Gabe seems pretty decent. Cas is…quiet."

Cora laughed. "Yeah, Cas isn't a huge talker. But he's a good person, too."

"How do they hunt the Djinn down?" Chris asked, bringing the conversation back to the thing that was threatening them.

"I guess they live in ruins of some sort. From what I could hear, any run-down place could be a ruin, but the Djinn do certain things to it to make it their own."

"What, like, pillars and old thrones and stuff?" Chris opened Cora's oboe case and ran his hand over the instrument, clacking his fingers over the keys.

"I don't know. I think it's mostly markings that they put up. Like the markings we have around here," she indicated the sigils on the woodwork.

Chris looked around. "Yeah…it's pretty crazy." He looked back at her, his amber eyes intense. "Cora, did you know anything about this? Any of this? I mean, did you know about our…him?"

"No, my mom never talked about him. My stepfather adopted me as his own when I was three months old, and my biological father has never really been important to me." She traced her fingers over the grooves of one of the sigils. "I don't know if he did the right thing, but if this is his life, then maybe Edgar Roth had a reason for not wanting to see us."

Chris rolled his eyes. "He should have gotten a vasectomy."

Cora flushed. "I'm glad I'm alive."

The awkward silence sliced through Cora's head, and she regretted having said that because she knew that wasn't what Chris meant.

"Look, I…" "I didn't mean…" they both tried to speak at the same time again.

Chris sighed and smiled. "Okay, let's try this again: I am happy to be here. I just…it would have been better with a father. If he wasn't planning on being there, he shouldn't have banged my mom."

Cora made a face. "So, um…what's Garth like?"

If Chris noticed the awkward change in conversation, he didn't mention it. He was probably as thankful for the change as she was, though. "Garth's really interesting. All of these guys are really interesting. It's like they ignore almost everything that was invented after 1965 except themselves and computers."

"What do you mean?"

Chris pulled the curtain back. "Look in this yard, Cora. Every car out there is older than everyone except Bobby, and some of them are even older than him. Do you know what Garth has instead of an ipod or a CD changer? He has an eight-track player."

"What's that?"

"I'm still trying to figure it out!" Chris exclaimed with a laugh.

"Dean has a cassette player. I only know what those are because my best friend has a crush on a wanna-be hipster."

"And what about you, little sister? Do I have to worry about any crushes?"

Cora rolled her eyes. "Not funny."

Chris smirked at her. "Come on, it's time for bed."

"Hey, just because you're now my big brother, doesn't mean you get to order me around," Cora joked, happy when Chris smiled back at her before he turned off the light.

The dreamcatcher didn't keep her from having a nightmare. Maybe it just worked for Dean, since it had his initial on it, or maybe it didn't work at all. Or maybe it wasn't a dream. All she knew was that there was a Djinni standing in front of her, its teeth bared, its skin a blue color, and its eyes fixed directly on her face.

"Edgar Roth's child," it growled. "I know you are here."

Cora felt a surge of complete panic, but she thought fervently that she needed to close her mind off from it since it didn't seem to be able to see her.

"Where are you?" it sing-songed as it walked towards her. Cora had the presence of mind to shift to the side very quickly as it passed by her.

"Cora," Chris whispered, and she realized he had followed her into her dream. The Djinni must have heard his slight vocalization, though, because it turned in his direction and began to walk that way. Chris saw the beings' movements and started to reach out to Cora. She reached him just in time for them to both duck away from the Djinni and hide in a corner.

Well, if she was having a crazy nightmare, at least her brother was in it with her.

"Cora! Chris?"

They turned to see Gabriel shining with ethereal-or was that heavenly?—light as he held a wicked silver blade in his hand. Two huge golden wings that looked like they had lightning charging from the feathers stretched out from his back and around his head. He didn't look like he usually did. He looked really scary and badass and…well…tall.

"You two crazy kids need to wake up now, kay?" he shouted, trying to get the attention of the monster.

"Angel tricks," the Djinni hissed.

Cora wasn't quite sure what it meant by that until she realized that Gabriel was looking exactly at herself and her brother. And of course, the Djinni would think that Gabriel was tricking it because he was The Trickster. And of course, if he was looking at them, then the creature's attention was elsewhere…

"I said wake up!" Gabriel shouted in a terrifying and commanding voice that Cora didn't know he possessed. The sound of his shout echoed around the ruin and through Cora's head, making her gasp and sit up…

And she was sitting up in bed, shaking and cold, disoriented, and staring around the room.

"Cora, you okay?" Chris whispered, his breath coming in gasps.

"What was that?" she managed to sob.

Chris turned on the light and crossed to her bed, wrapping his shaking arms around her. "It's okay," he murmured against her hair. It sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than her.

They sat together for a long time, until they heard the tinklings of a clock chiming downstairs. It was apparently midnight.

"Was that one of them?" Chris finally asked.

"Yeah." Cora played with the string around her wrist. "Um…did Gabriel give you one of these?" she held her wrist up for inspection.

Chris put his hand over her wrist. "No. No, he didn't."

"Come on, I think I can duplicate this knot, and I know I saw some red string like this downstairs."

Chris seemed to understand that Cora was currently full of nervous energy and needed to do something in the wake of what just happened. Together, staying very close without actually touching, they descended the stairs and snuck into Bobby's study where Cora found a spool of string laying in a paperclip cup.

She was just beginning the knot when the lights turned on and Bobby came into the room. Without his baseball hat, he looked shorter and slightly older, and in a T-shirt and pajama pants, he seemed thinner, less imposing, less broad-shouldered and strong.

"What the hell are you two doin' up at this hour?" he groused, his voice clearly conveying how crazy and stupid he felt they were. He approached them and saw what Cora was doing, then sighed. "Okay, sweetheart, you loop it over, not under, and loop it twice."

Cora gave him the slightest of smiles. He walked her through the knot, then took a seat behind the desk.

"All right, you two idjits ready to tell me what brought this little expedition about?"

"We've been elevated to idjit status," Chris said, poking Cora with his elbow.

"I noticed," she replied dryly.

Bobby gave them another look. "Welcome to the family. Now spill yer guts."

**C'mon, you know you want Bobby to call you idjit. :-)**


	6. Where Cas gets hurt and Gabe gets mad

**Over in the mature section, I will be posting a deleted Destiel scene about what happens between Dean and Castiel a little later in the chapter. **

Chris and Cora spent the rest of the night on the sofa with Bobby nearby in the recliner. He had apparently taken care of Sam and Dean when they were children enough to know that after some sort of crazy astral projection that took two kids straight into the lair of a frightening monster, those kids just aren't going to get any sleep on their own.

They woke up to the sound of Gabriel and Dean arguing.

"—he's not invincible!" Gabriel was yelling.

"I don't think he is!" Dean yelled back.

"You know what I think, Dean-O? I think you got yourself an angel girlfriend, and you just decided that since he'll come to your rescue every time you do something stupid, you've stopped even _trying_ to be careful!"

"He's got a point," Sam said. "I mean, that was a pretty stupid move."

Dean sighed. Cora opened her eyes and found the hunter pacing in the doorway of Bobby's study. "Okay, first? He's a guy, so he's not my girlfriend. If you insist on labeling him, could you call him my boyfriend?"

Cora and Chris walked to the study and found Castiel covered in blood, laying on the floor, his head and upper body being cradled by Gabriel who was sitting behind him. Strangely enough, Gabriel looked near tears.

"Gabriel…" Castiel moaned, reaching his hand up.

"Hey, I got you baby bro," Gabriel whispered, taking the hand that was offered and nuzzling Castiel with his nose. If Cora wasn't mistaken, Gabriel kissed his little brother on the head. "Don't worry, I just need a few minutes, I got drained bringing us all here." He shot Dean a really angry look at this. Then he caught sight of the kids. "Hey, kids."

Chris waved his hand, face stoic, and Cora gave a little smile. "Should I grab the first aid kit?" she asked.

Sam shook his head. "Gabriel's got it for right now. Cas'll be okay."

Gabriel ran his fingers through Castiel's hair and pulled him a little closer. "Yeah, Gabriel can take care of it. Castiel can take care of it. Everyone except _Dean_ can take care of it."

"Gabriel, please don't start," Sam practically begged.

Dean ran his hands over his hair like he was in pain, and then knelt down by Castiel's feet, laying a hand on the angel's calf. "I'm sorry," he choked out. "Jeez, Gabe, I'd never…not on purpose…"

Whatever Gabriel was about to say in answer was cut off by Castiel coughing violently until dark blood trickled out of his mouth. "There isn't time," he decided out loud. "Sammy, promise me you'll take care of me, okay?"

"Wait, what are you—"

Sam was cut off by Gabriel working his "mojo" on Castiel, and then collapsing shortly afterward. Castiel, however, seemed to be recovered immediately.

"He gave me too much Grace," Castiel said quietly, his hand going to his stomach where there had been a huge bloody hole only moments before.

Dean helped Castiel up and pulled him into a hug while Sam went to Gabriel to check him over.

"He's alive," Sam decided.

"He'll be fine," Castiel said. "He simply needs to, as you two often put it, recharge his batteries."

Sam looked Gabriel over and then pulled him up and lifted him over his shoulder. "Right. Well, I'll put him to rest in our room, Dean. Cas, you should get the first shower since you're covered in blood."

"Thank you, Sam," Castiel said. "And just in case you didn't know, Gabriel will more than likely require some sweets when he wakes up."

Sam adjusted Gabriel on his shoulders and nodded. "I'll put a Baby Ruth next to the bed."

"Thank you, Sam."

Sam disappeared with Gabriel and then Dean supported Castiel into the bathroom so he could shower, then left him to it while he went to help Bobby with the breakfast.

"Do you think Gabriel will be all right?" Chris asked Cora.

"If Castiel isn't concerned, then we probably shouldn't be either," she said, doubt tinting her voice. Gabriel? Could he hear her when he was unconscious? Of course, she shouldn't be reaching out to him like that. He didn't want to her to. He wanted her to close her mind. And she would.

"Hey, Chris?" Bobby called from the kitchen.

Chris and Cora both went to the door. "Yes sir?"

"Your sister made meatloaf last night. Think you can handle the bacon today?"

Chris managed a smile. "Yes, sir."

Dean threw him a couple of packages of applewood smoked and a few more of pepper smoked. Cora wanted to ask how much bacon they were expected to eat, and then she remembered how quickly three pies disappeared.

"I should have taken a piece of the apple," she muttered as she turned from the kitchen.

"If you're talking about the pie, we'll have more tonight," Sam assured her, putting his hands on her shoulders. "Hey, come with me for a sec, okay?"

He sat Cora down on the sofa and sat across from her on the coffee table. "So, Gabriel said that the Djinn managed to pull both you and Chris into their ruin last night."

Cora nodded and retold her story, then explained about how she tied the string on Chris's hand. "Sam? Why didn't Gabriel give Chris one if they're so helpful? Are they not actually helpful?" She had been wondering if it was a sort of placebo that was just supposed to make her believe that it worked.

"Chris has had a different life than you. He's naturally more closed off than you are. But, you did good by giving him one." Sam sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "I put Gabriel up in the room you guys are using, but he should be gone by the time you're ready for bed. I mean, he'll hopefully be up in a few hours, but…"

"Um, Sam, how did we have the dream with the dreamcatchers? I mean, if all of this stuff is real, then shouldn't dreamcatchers work?"

"If you had been dreaming, then yeah, they would have helped some. But the older you get, the less they work, and again, you weren't dreaming. You were really there. Or. Well, your spirits were."

"How, though?" It felt so surreal, and she was sure the beginnings of a panic were welling up inside. "How could they even hurt us like that?"

"Well, I'll have Gabriel explain it whenever he wakes up, but he said that the Djinn who are currently being sent are really high up in the hierarchy. Like, the big guns, and they know how to do more than the regular ones do."

And the regular ones were so very scary…

"Sam, I am done with the shower," Castiel said.

Sam turned and looked at the angel, who looked strange in one of Dean's shirts and a pair of sweatpants. He was holding his suit and trench coat , still soiled with blood, in his arms.

"Thanks, Cas. Give Dean your clothes. He'll show you how to wash them."

Cora stood up. "I'll show Castiel. Dean's making breakfast."

Cora took Castiel through the kitchen to the strange little mudroom where the washer was and showed him how to soak his white shirts and the trench to get the blood stains out, then discovered that his suit was dry clean only when she looked at the tag for the jacket.

"Water seems to be a basic component of human cleanliness," Castiel remarked. "How does one clean something and keep it dry?"

Cora thought this over. "I don't know how they do it, but I don't see how they could wash out blood without water."

"Don't tell me we might have to get Castiel something to wear other than that ratty suit and dirty trench coat!" Dean said, poking his head in from the kitchen. He then added, "Hope you both like chocolate chip pancakes."

He disappeared and Cora sighed. If she stayed here much longer, she was going to weigh a ton.

Garth then appeared at the doorway. "Hey, Castiel. Dean's clothes will probably be a bit big on you, so I thought I'd bring you some of mine." He produced both a long-sleeved and short-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans. "I used to weigh a little more than I do now, so those jeans should fit you. Probably be a mite more comfortable than Dean's big stuff."

Castiel took the proffered clothing. "Thank you, Garth. I appreciate the offer."

"Don't mention it," he said with a wave of his hand. "I figure I owe you after the help you gave us last night."

Cora smiled as Garth disappeared. "Now you can layer your shirts like the guys do," she said. "Dean would probably like that on you."

Castiel looked dubious, but at Cora's insistence that Dean would like it, he pulled on first the long-sleeved shirt, and then the short-sleeved. It was tight across the chest, but it looked good, she decided. The jeans were another matter all together. Castiel was incredibly modest and changed out of her sight, which Cora appreciated, but when it came to the jeans, he came to her, his blue eyes pleading, and said, "I don't understand the fastening."

Button-fly jeans were not an area of expertise for Cora, so she found Dean and sent him in, taking over the pancake making herself.

By the time everything was laid out on the table, everyone was showered and dressed, and if Castiel looked slightly flushed and Dean looked a little too happy, no one said anything about it.

Sam had come and cut up fruit for them, though Bobby, he and Cora were the only ones who really ate it. Castiel didn't eat anything at all, and Bobby had the "Low Cholesterol Special," as Dean called it, cottage cheese and fruit and scrambled egg whites. If the hunters all didn't have bruises all over their faces, it would have been nearly normal.

"What happened?" Cora asked. "How many of these things are there?"

Dean tore his eyes away from Castiel long enough to take a swig of coffee and answer her. "What happened was we found a huge nest of Djinn at a ruin out in Meadow. And then we pretty much got our asses handed to us by them."

"The fight was rather harrowing," Castiel remarked in his dry, emotionless way. He looked so different in his dark, faded black Led Zepplin T-shirt and grey thermal undershirt, that everyone at the table had a hard time taking their eyes off of him, so Dean's staring wasn't so out of place. The only two people who seemed unaffected by Castiel's change were Garth, who was busy shoving as many pancakes down his throat as possible, and Chris, who didn't know Castiel as well.

"This shirt is great, Garth," Dean said amicably, running his fingers along the hem of the sleeve, earning a very earnest, assessing look from the angel. "Is it vintage, man?"

Garth nodded. "It belonged to my Daddy. He went to a few concerts in the seventies. I'm pretty sure I might have been conceived at one."

"Thanks for that information," Dean smiled wryly. "Always good to have you along, Garth."

Garth saluted Dean with his juice, seemingly unaware of Dean's ironic tone. "Always good to be here."

"Castiel," Cora said, trying to keep a handle on the situation, "do you know how Chris and I found ourselves with you guys last night?"

Castiel frowned. "The Djinn we are currently faced with are much stronger than those we have faced in the past. If I were to compare them to angels, which would be a blaspheme, I would call them the archangels of the Djinn."

"Wait, what is she talking about, Cas?" Dean asked, no longer feeling the soft cotton currently laying across Castiel's shoulders. "You were there? Both of you?"

Sam cleared his throat and Bobby looked a little uncomfortable.

"Dean, I was unaware that you had not been told. The Djinn we fought against were apparently able to make a sort of astral connection with the Roth children while they were sleeping last night."

"I don't think we've really had a chance to talk about it," Sam said quickly. "I mean, Dean, you made yourself bait and didn't even wait to see if someone would be around to reel you in, then Cas used all his mojo ganking the Djinn that were attacking you, and then he got slashed in the belly…it's been sort of one thing after the other."

Dean nodded. "Oh, yeah, interesting. And yet _you_ know about it, Sammy.

Sam frowned. "Gabriel told me. I hadn't thought that you might not know."

"And when did Gabriel manage to tell you this little nugget of information?" Dean was getting angrier and angrier by the minute. Castiel's insistence that Dean wasn't overly fond of creatures messing around in people's "grapefruit" seemed almost an understatement.

"I'm pretty sure Gabe and I talked this over when you were cradling Cas against your chest and begging him to forgive you," Sam shot back. Then he got a little upset with himself and said quietly, "Sorry, Cas, I didn't mean to embarrass you, man."

"I am not embarrassed, Sam," Castiel responded.

"I wasn't _cradling_ him," Dean started, but then stopped himself. "Never mind. Okay, so the Djinn can mojo the kids to them while they sleep? What about the dreamcatchers?" He turned to Bobby. "Our dreamcatchers were still there, weren't they? A Blackfoot Shaman made those for us."

"The dreamcatchers are still there," Sam told him. "Remember, Dean, the Shaman made them for us, not for Cora and Chris. And we were a lot younger than they are. "

"They weren't dreaming," Castiel said.

"Yeah, there's that too," Sam added. "I mean, it was their spirits that showed up, not a dream."

Castiel put his hand on Dean's arm. "Dean, this is the exact scenario that Gabriel and I have been attempting to prepare the Roth children for. Remember I explained that we needed to fortify Cora's mind as it was so very open?"

"Yeah, it seems to be working like a charm," Dean muttered.

"But it is working," Chris said. Cora suddenly realized that Chris had been quiet the entire time.

"Seems like it," Garth agreed. "I mean, they managed to keep out of sight from the Djinn, and they got away clean."

Dean started to look a little mollified. "But…you guys weren't going to keep this from me?"

"I wasn't," Cora said quickly, just in case Bobby and Sam needed time to work up to a lie.

"Me neither," Chris promised.

They all fell into relative silence after that. Dean began to eat his pancakes and bacon again, between being fascinated by Castiel's makeover and glaring at Sam every now and then. Sam just looked back with his huge puppy dog eyes, guileless and unassuming for a man who was nearly six and a half feet tall.

Clean-up was tense, and Cora was dreading the next several hours until Gabriel would wake up and lighten the mood. Or, she hoped he would.

"Hey, Cora, can you drive?" Chris asked as he handed her a wet dish to dry off.

"Not yet."

"But you're almost sixteen?"

"Not for another nine months."

Bobby took the dish from her. "I don't see why you can't start learning now," he said. "I've got tons of cars outside."

"What about cars?" Dean asked, wrapping up the leftovers.

Bobby smiled at Dean. "I know this is going to be hard, Dean, but it seems that we might need to teach Cora how to drive."

Dean looked like Christmas just came early. "Oh, kiddo…today is your lucky day!"

Cora managed to laugh. Apparently, the best way to get Dean to relax was to tell him that you don't know the difference between stick and standard.

"…Stick?" was all she said.

"Yeah, the gear shift," Dean answered.

"What gears? I thought you wanted to teach me how to drive?"

Dean patted her on the head. "You're so adorable!"

In all, the driving lessons went well. Dean only yelled once, and Cora only broke down into tears twice. By the time they decided to head back into the house, Gabriel was awake, Dean seemed genuinely happy to see him so, and Garth had managed to decimate Bobby's beer cache. By the time dinner came around, Cora could almost pretend that she was just on a vacation to visit a much-loved uncle, some quirky cousins, and her half brother. But as the sun sank along the horizon, fear began to grip her heart again. How were one archangel, one seraphim, and four humans supposed to protect her from a whole hive of Djinn?


	7. Cassie Bear and Gabbie Giraffe

**If you haven't watched either ****_Shaun of the Dead_**** or ****_Labyrinth_****, why not? Go watch it. I'll wait. **

As they sat down to dinner, Cora had an interesting thought.

"Um…Bobby?"

Bobby was currently loading his plate down with mashed turnip and fried chicken. "What's up, darlin'?"

"Um…are zombies real?"

The hunters all exchanged glances, shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

"A'course zombies ain't real," Bobby muttered.

Across from her, Chris mouthed, "Oh my God!"

"Wait, wait a minute here," Dean said, holding his hands up. "Don't get any ideas, you two. You are not going zombie hunting."

"Why not? I have a cricket bat," Chris said with a grin.

"Yeah, and I have a whole crate full of LP's that would be best used as weapons than in a record player."

Chris winced sympathetically. "Pink Floyd?"

"Worse. The Beatles. Like, all of The Beatles."

The table erupted. "You just haven't heard "Hey Jude" enough times!"

"Wait, all of The Beatles? On vinyl?"

"Does this mean your mom has Pink Floyd, Chris?"

"What is the significance of insects to the conversation?"

"Wait…cricket bat? Where do you think you are, England?"

"I just kind of love that my sister's seen "Shaun," you know? I mean, it's the best zombie movie ever."

"Saying shit like that is what sends the Romero zombies after your ass, kid. Have some respect."

"No, no, no, you can't shoot a zombie in the head! Then you just have an angry zombie on your hands!"

Cora laughed at the cacophony of noise being made, but took careful note of the fact that no one was bringing up the Djinn or the plans that the hunters and angels had been supposedly been making.

They were all thoroughly enjoying themselves and the food when the unmistakable sound of heavy footfalls were heard, coming from the general vicinity of the porch.

The hunters all looked at each other, eyebrows raised for a split second before all four of them sprang into action. Bobby tossed shotguns to the boys, who were all moving towards different entrances. As Garth stepped out into the mudroom to guard the side door, Castiel and Gabriel huddled Cora and Chris into the corner of the kitchen, blocking them in with their bodies. Bobby stood near the front door, one hand on a pistol, the other hand holding a flask of holy water.  
At the knock, Dean pumped his shotgun.

"Who's there?" Bobby called, his voice quick and angry to show that he wasn't going to change just because he was preparing for a fight. Had he answered pleasantly, if the person on the other side was a hunter, they might shoot first and ask questions later.

"It's me, Bobby," a man's deep voice said from the other side.

Bobby swore. Not that this was new, either, but the sheer vitriol behind the swearing was. "Christ, Edgar!" he finally shouted, wrenching the door open.

Cora and Chris both gasped, and Gabriel turned to face them, his eyebrows raised to his hairline. "Plot twist," he said in a matter-of-fact voice that scared Cora even more than the prospect of her biological father walking in the door.

"You abject moron!" Bobby railed. Unlike when he called the younger hunters "moron" or "idjit," all warmth was gone from his tone, all light gone from his eye. He meant this insult, he was clearly angry at Edgar Roth, and Cora's heart warmed to the old hunter. His frustration on Chris's and her behalf was one of the kindest things he had done for them yet, and she knew in that moment that she would always remember and love him fondly. Like a really crotchety old uncle or that Grandpa from "Up." "Drink this," Bobby directed, handing his flask over to the hunter, who took it and drank.

Cora felt her entire body shaking as she stared at this new man, who was around the same height as Castiel, though broad and solid like Dean, his hair dark and curly like hers and Chris's. Unconsciously, her hand reached over and grabbed Chris's arm. He was shaking, too, and that realization made her feel better.

This whole situation was so unfair, and she began to silently beg Gabriel and Castiel to take her upstairs so she wouldn't have to face this man. She didn't want him, didn't need him. He was nothing to her. She had a dad. He was a great dad. He was there for her. He took her to school and told her she could play the clarinet, and later when she wanted to learn the oboe, he said yes and told her she could do that too. He went to her recitals and her band competitions and never asked her why she didn't want to be a cheerleader. He loved her. Owen Bartholomew was her father. Not Edgar Roth. NO.

"Come on, Cookie," Gabriel whispered. "Sit down at the table."

He wasn't using his authority on her, but she obeyed him anyway. Chris settled in next to her, and put his arm over the back of her chair.

"Well, if you're here to cock up their lives some more, you may as well meet them," Bobby was saying, directing the other man towards the kitchen. "We're just now eating."

Cora turned to Chris, ignoring Dean, Sam and Garth as they returned to the kitchen and set their weapons against the wall at arm's length. She couldn't watch as her father entered the kitchen, and Chris seemed to take her view of things because he stared into her eyes as well.

"Kids," Bobby said, his voice back to its patient bark, "there wasn't never no way of doin' this easy, so let's just get it over with like pulling off a band-aid, okay?" Chris's arm tightened around Cora's shoulders. "Chris, Cora, c'mon, look up here," Bobby commanded.

Obediently, both children looked up at their father. Someone, she thought it might have been Sam, growled "sunovabitch" out under their breath.

"Hi, kids," Edgar said, smiling pleasantly. It was a smile Cora had seen many times before in her own pictures and in the mirror. Her smile. Her heart hitched at that.

This man, she belonged to. This man was someone she should know and love and be with. But he made it so that she never would be. He had walked away from her.

"Now sit your fool ass down," Bobby ordered.

Edgar folded himself down into a chair, staring at the wall just behind Chris and Cora's faces, his eyes not quite making contact with them. Cora tried to look anywhere but at him, and found herself settling on Sam's face. Sam smiled tight-lipped at her and lifted a forkful of turnip to his mouth as a toe pressed down gently on her foot. She wasn't sure if it was him or Dean, but she didn't really care. It was a nice gesture.

"Soooo…" Gabriel said, his voice sounding like a game show host's, "there's no way this will stop being awkward, and I'm pretty sure that the time for discussing kick-ass zombie movies is past, so I'm just going to bring up the business at hand. Edgar, have you found a way to banish the Djinn?"

Edgar assessed Gabriel for several moments. "And who are you, exactly?"

"Gabriel. The archangel. Answer the question."

Edgar stared for several minutes, his eyes roving over Gabriel's face, disbelief clearly etched on his features. He then looked at all of his companions as if waiting for one of them to confirm that it was a joke and that Gabriel was in no way serious, but no one batted an eye.

"Archangel?" Edgar gasped. "Then it's true…"

Gabriel gave a sarcastic frown, ironic concern lining his face. "Oh, did the apocalypse somehow just pass you by without your notice? Yes it's true."

"Gabriel," Castiel said evenly, his voice just slightly tinged with warning. If he said anything else, it was not out loud.

"Well?" Dean asked, bringing the conversation back to the Djinn. "Can you banish them? Or, well, can we?"

"I think I found a spell," Edgar said. "But it's really ancient and there's no telling what it will do. It won't be a permanent fix, either. The Djinn will likely find their way back here after a couple hundred years."

"Good enough for me," Bobby grumbled.

"Yeah, but remember that whole Purgatory fiasco?" Sam asked. "What if we get sucked up wherever it is that we send the Djinn to?"

"I don't think that will happen," Edgar said.

"You don't think very much at all, do you?" Gabriel countered.

Edgar frowned at the archangel. "Have I done something to you, son?"

Gabriel's left eyebrow shot straight up into the air. "I am not your son, Edgar Roth. And no, you have done nothing to me at all."

Sam placed his hand on Gabriel's arm, and Gabriel retreated into himself for the rest of the meal. Not that there was much to the rest of the meal. Edgar's presence was the proverbial wet blanket, and all the delicious food was packaged up and put in the refrigerator with the promise of lunch the next day.

Cora was just washing her hands off when she realized she wanted a book from her bag upstairs and happened upon Gabriel and Sam, speaking softly with the door slightly ajar.

"He's not your father," Sam was saying quietly. "I mean, trust me, I get it, Gabe, but it's making things a little worse."

"I know, Sammy, I know," Gabriel answered. "It's just…the things you humans do to each other…to yourselves…and my dad…"

"Hey, Gabe, I'm telling you: I get it. My dad's last words were to _Dean_, telling him that he might have to kill me some day. I get it."

Cora peeked into the room and watched as Sam sank down onto his bed and put a hand on Gabriel's shoulder.

"Why are we like this, Sam? Our brothers are Daddy's perfect little soldiers, and we're the ones always running away."

Sam removed his hand from Gabriel's shoulder and gave a tight smile. "I don't know, Gabe. It's pretty fucked up, though, isn't it?"

Gabriel stood in front of Sam for several moments before throwing himself in Sam's lap. "Hold me."

Sam spluttered and threw Gabriel onto the other bed as Gabriel laughed with glee. "Oh, I'm gonna mess you up, Angel boy!" Sam shouted, using his entire body to elbow-slam Gabriel in the ribs.

If Sam had done that to any other person in the world, it probably would have messed them up pretty badly, but the strong Archangel just continued to cackle as Sam body slammed him once more. Cora decided it was time to enter the room, if only to stop Sam before he hurt himself.

"Um…what's going on?" she asked innocently as Sam rubbed his armpit in Gabriel's face, causing true distress for the first time.

"I give! I give!" Gabriel shouted. "No more, I beg you!"

Sam started laughing. "Ha! I found your weakness!"

"Weakness?" Gabriel choked. "It's like The Bog of Eternal Stench under here! Get off me!"

"Does that make you the Goblin King?" Sam teased, still rubbing his armpit in Gabriel's face.

Gabriel pushed Sam off him and elbowed him in the ribs, but just hard enough to make Sam grab his side and laugh some more.

"You just want to see me in those tight David Bowie pants."

Cora leaned against the door frame and observed, "It must be something about you Winchester boys that you like being touched by an angel."

Sam's face went comically blank and then he started to pull away from Gabriel. "Oh, no, no, Cora, that's not…not me and…no, I'm not…I mean, I like girls. And. Not…"

Gabriel just gave his usual shit-eating grin and wrapped his arm around Sam's neck, giving Cora a saucy wink as he pulled the hulking man down towards his small frame. "Oh, Sammy, don't deny our cosmic attraction to each other."

Sam was struggling against Gabriel's hold, still stuttering about how he wasn't _that way_, not that there was anything wrong with being _that way_, he just wasn't _that way_, not really and Gabriel really needed to let him go or he was going to tell Dean. Yeah. Dean. He'd tell Dean and then Gabriel would really be sorry.

Cora laughed, the tension in her belly being shoved aside for the affection she felt for both of these males. Even if she never saw either one of them ever again after this week, she would always remember them fondly.

"I'm just here for my book," Cora said as Sam finally succumbed to the pressure of the archangel on his shoulders and fell to the floor in a comically large heap of long limbs and heavy thud.

"Isn't he just the cutest thing?" Gabriel asked gleefully, pressing a very loud, very messy kiss to Sam's face.

Cora suddenly decided that everything was going to be okay. She was going to go back downstairs and face the man who had fathered her, and then she was going to do whatever she could to make sure that she could go home and keep her family safe.

Back downstairs, Garth and Chris were sitting on the sofa, facing off with Edgar, who was stoically holding their gazes. Garth's face, a contradiction of being both long and babyish, was set in a very deep frown, his normal good humor replaced by a dour expression.

"Y'all okay?" Garth asked the trio as they descended and took spots throughout the room.

"We're fine," Gabriel said, smirk back in place.

Cora squeezed into the sofa between Garth and her brother and Sam sat down on the floor by their feet, his knees pulled up to his chest. Chris once again set his arm protectively around Cora's shoulders and she smiled up at him.

"I'm glad you two seem to like each other," Edgar said.

"They're easy to like," Garth commented, and Cora was grateful for him that he kept her from answering right away.

"They're great kids," Sam agreed. "You should hear Cora play the oboe."

Edgar looked at Cora, and she met his gaze even though she didn't want to. "I've heard her," he whispered. "And I've seen Chris play football."

Chris's hand flexed against Cora's shoulder. No one spoke until Bobby, Dean and Castiel emerged from the study, which Cora had just realized had been closed off.

"It is a good plan," Castiel told Gabriel, who nodded once at his younger brother.

"This is how it's going to go," Dean began. "We stay up as late tonight as we possibly can. Kids? You with me? We'll read, watch TV, talk about anything except your feelings, but just try and stay up. Then we'll sleep. The angels will watch over us to keep the Djinn from working their mojo on you two. Sleep as long as you can tomorrow afternoon, because we need you to stay awake tomorrow night while we go through this. Edgar, tomorrow night, you are going to do everything you need to work the spell. Bobby's got all the ingredients here except the antler, but I figure we can bag a deer early in the morning. The rest of us are going to hold off the Djinn while you work the spell. If all goes well, we'll have the kids back home to their moms in less than two days. We all good?"

Everyone in the room nodded mutely, and Cora thought to herself that talking about anything, especially feelings, was just not going to happen at all.

They ended up talking about nothing of real consequence. As the night went on, they all got progressively more stupid (except for the angels, of course, who did not require sleep, though Gabriel said he enjoyed naps every now and then, and Castiel admitted that laying in bed could be enjoyable, then blushed and didn't speak again for a very long while), and eventually the hunters began to sing their favorite songs. Shortly after Dean belted out "Smoke on the Water," complete with a vocalization of the guitar riffs (with Gabriel and Garth accompanying him) around three in the morning, Bobby decided it was time for the kids to get some rest.

Chris and Cora were escorted upstairs by Gabriel and Castiel, who gave them several last-minute instructions on what to do in the event of a Djinn-noggin invasion.

"Just try to remember that your body is still here, and that you can return to it," Gabriel said.

"Gabriel and I will be monitoring you both in the spirit realm, so you may call out to us if you are frightened and we will be there."

"And we're going to be right here," Dean promised. "If Gabe and Cas feel like it's getting too intense, we'll wake you up."

Cora and Chris took turns changing and brushing their teeth in the bathroom. Once they were in bed, Castiel went over to Chris and karate-chopped his blankets around him, then folded the sheet down so that it was just under his chin. Chris raised his eyebrows at Cora as Castiel came over and cocooned her into bed in a similar fashion.

"Um…bro?" Gabe said, munching on some kettle corn. "Whatcha doin'?"

Castiel turned to his brother. "I am tucking in the children. I understand it is customary to do so."

Cora hid her smile behind her sheet, but Chris laughed openly.

"God damn, Cas, can you _get_ any more adorable?" Dean asked from the doorway.

Castiel was clearly nonplussed by the reaction of his people and looked around wide-eyed. "Was I wrong? Is it not customary?"

Cora felt badly for him since Dean, Sam and even Gabriel were clearly going to be teasing him about this for the rest of the day, so she sat up and put her hand on his arm. "No, you're right, Castiel. It is customary. It's just usually a person's parents who do the tucking in."

Gabriel clapped his brother on the back and gave him an encouraging smile. "It's okay, broseph."

"Yeah," Chris agreed. "And since our parents aren't here, you know, it's nice."

Cora gave Dean a little glare on Castiel's behalf, but Dean apparently either didn't see or didn't care.

Chris's words seemed to make Castiel feel better, because he produced a teddy bear from seemingly out of nowhere and said, "Then can I offer either of you a stuffed animal to cuddle? I understand that it is also customary."

Sam and Dean could apparently no longer contain themselves and devolved into snorting giggles from the doorway, hitting each other on the arms and sinking to their knees, biting their fists to keep from laughing out loud.

Cora sat up and reached out for the bear. "I'd love him, Castiel. Thank you."

Gabriel also seemed to be taking umbrage to Sam and Dean's reactions, so he touched the plain brown bear and gave him a little trench coat and a wee collar and blue tie. The part that surprised her were the wings sprouting from the back through the trench, all navy blue and black with individual little silky "feathers" sewn on by just the very tips so that they moved when the bear moved. Cora laughed and brushed her palm over them.

"Now it's a Cassie Bear instead of a teddy bear."

Cora hugged the soft bear. "I love him, guys. Thanks." And she meant it. She usually slept while hugging a pillow (or, if no one was looking, a battered old Snoopy plushie she'd been carting around since she was about six months old), but with so many people around, Cora hadn't felt right asking for a second pillow and had even noticed that Bobby only slept in his big queen-sized bed with one, so she had been making do. But the teddy? It was great. It even sort of…well, smelled like both Castiel and Gabriel. This sort of earthy scent like the trees just after a rain.

Gabriel frowned. "But Chris doesn't have anything…"

"I'm great, Gabe. Really!" Chris insisted, but too late. Within seconds, Gabriel had manifested a soft cotton giraffe, all golden and brown with a little high-collared army jacket and the most adorable golden-and-fire orange wings sprouting from its shoulders.

"I suppose that's a Gabby Bear, huh?" Sam taunted, but from the relative safety of behind Dean.

"Aw, now Sammy," Dean said sarcastically, "it's _adorable_." He pouted, his full lower lip getting even fuller. "I bet you wish _you_ had a Gabby Bear."

"I know you want a Cassie Bear," Sam jibed. "Hey, Cas, why not make one for Dean while you're at it? I know he'd love one."

Castiel frowned at Sam. "Dean generally prefers to cuddle me while he sleeps, and I confess I prefer things that way as well, but if he'd like one…"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Dean cried. "I don't cuddle, man. Dudes don't cuddle."

"Dudes don't do a lot of things—"

"Hey!" Gabriel shouted. "Look guys, we're trying to keep the kids from having nightmares, and if you continue down this rabbit hole of a conversation, that's all they're going to have." He then cleared his throat. "And it's a giraffe, not a bear. Get your species correct."

"Are you idjits ever gonna let these poor kids get some  
shut-eye?" Bobby groused as he walked by the room. "What're ya doin' anyway, readin' them a damned bedtime story?"

"Actually," Castiel started, but Gabriel grabbed him by the collar.

"Nope, we're done. Time to hit the road to dreamland, kids."

Cora and Chris called out thankful "goodnights" as Dean made sure the black-out curtains were secure against the coming dawn and finally closed the door. Cora turned and spooned her Cassie Bear, pressing his wings to her chest as she buried her nose against this head.

"You know, they're really annoying," Chris said. "But I've got to admit, I'm going to miss them."

A wave of melancholy hit Cora. She remembered what Gabriel had said that first night… "_Sorry, Cookie. This whole trip is a one way ticket._." Once this was all over, she was never going to see any of them again.

**I want a Gabby Giraffe like you don't even know. I would kill for a Gabby Giraffe. Also, how cute is Castiel? **


End file.
